In the U.S., a 17-year-old Muslim girl converted to Christianity and ran away from home. The Christian powers are celebrating her.
Perhaps it has something to do specifically with Florida. A decade ago, the drama surrounding little Elian Gonzalez, a refugee boy from Cuba whose mother died during their trip to the U.S. and whose father wanted him back in Cuba, also played out there. What was actually a matter of reuniting a family became a question of fate for an entire nation: Freedom or oppression were the crude options.
Four years ago was the case of Terri Schiavo, the brain-dead young woman whose husband wanted to take her off life support. This very private tragedy became a national drama: Incited by Christian fundamentalists, Republicans in Congress tried to stop the process by passing a new resolution.
This time, a new culture war is taking place in Florida, one that could whip the entire nation into a tizzy. Once again, Christian fundamentalists are in the first row and politics have already joined in.
Not an Isolated Case
In the middle of a new saga stands a shy 17-year-old girl from Columbus, Ohio, who ran away from home. This is something that happens daily in America. According to estimates from the National Runaway Switchboard, a youth assistance organization, between 1.6 and 2.8 million children run away from home every year. But this case is special. Rifqa Bary, the 17-year-old from Columbus, is a Muslim who converted to Christianity.
She is said to have run away because her Sri Lankan father wants to kill her on account of her conversion. She did not run away aimlessly. Instead, she sought refuge with a pastor and his wife in Orlando, Florida; Beverly and Blake Lorenz head the evangelical Global Revolution Church there. Rifqa got to know them over the internet and had phone contact with them before she fled.
Two weeks after they had taken the girl in, the pastor contacted the authorities and Rifqa’s parents, who, until then, had no idea if their daughter was dead or alive. At the same time, he arranged a television interview with a local television station. During the interview, Rifqa, in a white dress with a silver cross around her neck, explained in a stammering voice that, because of her conversion, her father wanted to “kill me. Or he’d have me sent back to Sri Lanka where they’d put me in the asylum.” Rifqa added, teary-eyed and with the pastor’s wife next to her, that “they have to kill me […] I want to worship Jesus […] I don’t want to die.”
From the Internet into the World
The interview found its way onto the internet through YouTube and instantly turned Rifqa’s case into a sensational story for Christian fundamentalists. On evangelical websites, support was massive for the minor to stay with the pastor and his wife in Florida. Florida’s governor, Charlie Crist, a Republican, received hundreds of e-mails and faxes pleading to stop the girl from being sent home to her parents. The conservative television station Fox News called on its viewers to write e-mails to Crist. This has had some success: The governor, who would like to be elected senator in the future, said that he would fight for “Rifqa’s safety.” Florida’s Youth Services Office recommended in court, based on Crist’s words, that Rifqa can stay in Florida for the time being.
Rifqa’s father, Mohamed Bary, a jeweler, contests his supposed death threats and their Islamic underpinnings. In fact, according to research done by the U.S. media, there is no evidence to support them whatsoever. The man is neither violent at home nor an extremist. Rifqa was a cheerleader for the football team at her high school, an activity that requires her to wear a short skirt in public.
On the other side, many in the American media are wondering if the pastor and his wife encouraged Rifqa to flee. The family’s attorney, Craig McCarthy, deplores the politicization of the case, saying the family has been “exploited” by those who want to make the matter a religious issue, and Crist’s statement made the issue “a political matter as well.”
Heavy Ordnances
Rifqa’s lawyer, John Stemberger, himself an evangelical activist, is using the weightiest ordinance in the Christian fundamentalists’ culture war against the alleged Islamic menace in America: al-Qaida. One of the biggest cells worldwide of the terror organization, claims the attorney, once operated out of the mosque Rifqa’s parents belong to, the Noor Islamic Cultural Center.
In reality, there are a circle of radical Islamists in the capital of Ohio who took part in planning attacks on a mall and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York. Three men from Columbus have been jailed as a result. However, according to information from the state prosecutor’s office, they were not members of the Noor mosque.
This information appears to have had no effect on Stemberger. He assiduously claims that members of the mosque would have asked Rifqa’s father “to take care of everything right away.” The girl is “in threat of life and limb from radical Islamists in her hometown of Columbus.” Who has made direct death threats against Rifqa? The lawyer cannot say. “The same circumstances represent danger for her.”
On Thursday, the case will be heard before a judge in Orlando. It will not be the last act in the drama.
I have only one question for the pastor and his group:
If this young girl later decided that your particular brand of Christianity was not in line with her spiritual beliefs and values, and she announced that she wished to leave your church, would you continue to support and defend her?
How far are you willing to commit yourself to her well being?
Does your commitment go beyond your devotion to your church?
Does it go all the way toward the common acceptance of this human being’s innate right to choose her own spiritual salvation and her own religious views or even God forbid, the casting off of any religious views whatsoever?