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since Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:17.
Fathima Rifqa Bary Custody Case Becomes Anti-Muslim Circus
The Fathima Rifqa Bary circus in Florida is now shaping up in the tradition of American legal disputes that manage to encapsulate the state of the country at a particular moment. An electric photo essay on the Orlando Sentinal website by Ricardo Ramirez Buxeda parades archetypal tub-thumping attention-grabbers: there’s Alan Kornman of ACT for America waving around a copy of Reliance of the Traveller, a Fourteenth Century manual of Islamic jurisprudence, and pointing out a verse that prescribes death for apostates; meanwhile, Ed and Sandra Warmoth from the “Maccabean Resistance” harangue passersby with placards reading “Know Your Enemy, Know Your Season, Know Your G-d” (the Warmouths are actually Christians, but like an increasingly large swathe of American evangelicals, they prefer to identifyvicariously with Jewish cultural expressions and militaristic Zionism than with the historic priorities of Christianity); while Tom Trento of the Florida Security Councilgives a press conference. We also see Bary herself poring over a Bible in court; her tearful mother, and the father - a mild looking Westernized Sri Lankan in a suit who, we are to believe, would rather kill his daughter and face the consequences than live with the shame of a daughter who has rejected her Muslim heritage to become a Christian.
Meanwhile, Bary’s attorney, a conservative activist named John Stemberger, is alleging that her family have links to Al Qaeda through their local mosque in Ohio, and that Bary is the victim of “mental, physical and sexual abuse”. Stemberger has also publicised Bary’s parents’ home address; the St. Petersburg Times has a bit of background (link added):
Stemberger is the president and general counsel of the Florida Family Policy Council. Orlando magazine last month called him one of the 50 most powerful people in the city. He’s a leader in Florida’s anti-gay marriage movement and doesn’t believe in teaching evolution “as scientific fact.”
Also part of the story is Governor Charlie Crist, who likes to pander to the Christian Right. He’s in no mood to appeal for a bit of calm:
I am grateful to Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson for his decision to grant Fathima Rifqa Bary the right to remain in Florida.
The first and only priority of my administration is the safety and wellbeing of this child.
I am grateful for the good work of Department of Children and Families Secretary George Sheldon and my General Counsel, Rob Wheeler, for personally advocating the administration’s position by attending today’s hearing.
We will continue to fight to protect Rifqa’s safety and wellbeing as we move forward.
Curiously, one person is absent from the unfolding drama: Blake Lorenz, the pastor of the neo-Pentecostal Global Revolution Church to which Bary fled after communicating with the church on Facebook. Lorenz is apparently on holiday.
WorldNetDaily has a round-up of exultant conservative punditry on the subject:
[Pamela] Geller said the teen’s case “is a public relations nightmare for Islamist groups, as her plea validates everything that scholars such as Ibn Warraq, Robert Spencer, Dr. Andrew Bostom, Wafa Sultan, etc., have written and said.”
Sultan, a Syrian-born psychiatrist, human rights activist and author, wrote onJihadWatch.org that the case “highlights the danger of creeping jihad in the Western world.”
…Dr. Phyllis Chesler, author of “Are Honor Killings Simply Domestic Violence?” told Fox News Bary’s life will be in danger if she is forced to return to her parents.
“Anyone who converts from Islam is considered an apostate, and apostasy is a capital crime,” she said. “If she is returned to her family, if she is lucky, they will isolate her, beat her, threaten her, and if she is not ‘presuaded’ to return to Islam, they will kill her. They have no choice.”
And so on. Geller claims that she has “been talking to someone who is very close to Rifqa Bary”, who alleges that Bary was regularly beaten.
Also on the bandwagon is W.L. Cati ( whom I blogged here), who explains that
“As far as Muslims are concerned, she should have the death penalty for converting to Christianity…And so even though she is here and appears to be safe, thank God the judge made a good decision as far as her behalf, but what is Islam going to do?”
Cati says she believes the girl is telling the truth based on her own experience of having been married to a Muslim.
WorldNetDaily also notes a news story from Pakistan, which, without any evidence, accuses Bary of promiscuous behaviour and of “conjur[ing] up a story of conversion to Christianity” in the face of parental discipline. WND also carries a photo (from before her flight to Florida) of Bary posing cheerfully with a black American boy of around the same age as her, although the significance of this is unclear.
As I noted in my previous blog entry on this subject, Bary has a strange understanding of what an “honour killing” actually is; she claims it would be a “great honour” for her parents to kill her – but honour killing (which is rare in Sri Lanka anyway) is about restoring honour which is perceived to have been lost; it’s not about gaining extra merit, as if it were some kind of human sacrifice. Where did she get that idea from? And the formal death penalty for apostasy is a different matter again, with a variety of Islamic opinions about whether it is applicable or not, and if so who has the authority to carry it out. I have no idea what kind of a man Bary’s father is, but it is foolish to claim that a verse from Reliance of the Traveller proves that a Muslim father must kill his daughter, regardless of any paternal feeling and heedless of both the law (in either the USA or Sri Lanka) and of his own imprisonment (and in Ohio, execution) which would invariably follow.
