philosoraptor42 | Entries tagged with rifqa bary

Rifqa Bary is a girl from a Muslim family who was indoctrinated by an evangelical Christian group who helped her run away with them. I have previously written posts on this here, here and here.

( The Story So Far.... )

The New Twist

Anyway, yes there is actually a new twist. It feels oddly predictable, but only if you are expecting the worst:

Christian convert Rifqa Bary is refusing chemotherapy for cancer because she believes that she was cured at a faith-healing event, according to a motion in Franklin County Juvenile Court.

Rifqa was to undergo a year of chemotherapy after her cancer was surgically removed, the document filed by her parents states.

But Rifqa, who is in foster care, was taken to a faith-healing event in Youngstown a couple of weeks ago by Franklin County Children Services, without her parents' consent, according to the document.

A motion to force treatment is to be considered today in Juvenile Court.

Rifqa's attorneys, meanwhile, are asking the court to make "special findings" so that she can obtain an immigration status that will allow her to stay in the country and obtain medical care. Rifqa, a native of Sri Lanka, does not have legal status in the United States, her attorneys have said in court.

An attorney for her parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, indicated in April that the family also was pursuing immigration documentation. All parties are under a gag order and cannot comment on any aspects of the case.

Rifqa ran away from home in July 2009, saying her Muslim father would kill her for converting to Christianity. She lived with evangelical pastors in Florida before returning to Ohio to live in a foster home.

That case is to conclude next Tuesday, when Rifqa will turn 18, making her an adult.

Meanwhile, tests have determined that Rifqa has a "rare form of cancer," according to her attorneys' court filings. Her supporters have said she has uterine cancer.

It's unclear whether she is cancer-free at the moment. The Barys' attorney, Omar Tarazi, said in a motion that Rifqa will need a hysterectomy if the cancer returns.

The Barys want to force chemotherapy and are concerned that their daughter could die without treatment, Tarazi wrote....

(Source)

Unclear? Either that means the writer of this piece is considering the possibility that Rifqa Bary has actually been healed through faith or (more sensibly) they may be recognising that there are rare cases where cancer clears up without treatment.

It's probably worth noting at this stage that Rifqa Bary's parents came to the US in the first place in order to provide her with medical care:

The Barys are from Galle on the southern coast of Sri Lanka in the Indian Ocean. When Rifqa was 5 she fell on a toy airplane that pierced the cornea of her right eye. Scar tissue built up over the next couple of years. Doctors told the Barys they might have to remove the eye. So they went to New York in 2000 for medical treatment,

Right Wing Watch note the irony of the current situation. Bary initially ran away from her parents, claiming that they were going to kill her for converting to Christianity. Now her parents are trying to force her to get chemotherapy because they are afraid that she will die without it, while Bary claims not to need it because her Christianity has cured her cancer.

( And Another Thing... )

*sighs*

(Cross-posted to atheism)
(Cross-posted to ONTD_P)

I'm following the RichardDawkins.net blog feed and so I wouldn't be writing about this if they hadn't posted it. In fact, the reason I didn't react when Pat Condell noted the party he was going to vote for in the last election was because websites like RichardDawkins.net presumably either thought no one would be interested, or were actively worried about being linked with the sentiment. In the thread on

atheism I was informed "Pat has stated many times he doesn't support the BNP. In a recent vid, he urged his listeners to vote small party/independent (whatever that means)." The "small party/independent" was UKIP (UK Independence Party) whom our new centre-right Prime Minister once referred to as "full of loonies and closet racists mostly". So no surprise that this particular loony and closet racist wanted to support them, but moving on now...

Pat Condell's Book Club
Even having seen this new video I was considering keeping the rage to myself until, right at the end of the vid, Pat Condell decides to recommend a book.

The book in question has a nice and revealing title: "Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That's Conspiring to Islamize America"

Conspiracy Theories Or Serious Non-Fiction?
One of the commenters of RichardDawkins.net had the following to say in response:

Wait a moment, isn't the book Pat is pimping published by the ultra right wing WorldNetDaily (WND) Books of "911 truth" and "Birthers" fame?

Oh dear Pat. First supporting UKIP now supporting conspiracy theorists....

I do hope he's being ironic.

Other books from WND include:
The Politically Incorrect Guide To Science (Tom Bethell exposes how science has been “politicized” to suit the agenda of the Left. From evolution to global warming--propaganda, hidden facts, and lies now surround most scientific topics.)
The Manchurian President: Barack Obama's Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists
Climategate: A Veteran Meteorologist Exposes The Global Warming Scam
The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration's War on America
The Grand Jihad: How Islam and the Left Sabotage America Andrew C. McCarthy offers a harrowing account of how the global Islamist movement’s jihad involves far more than terrorist attacks, and how it has found the ideal partner in President Barack Obama, whose Islamist sympathies run deep.
George Washington's Sacred Fire Most people believe that George Washington was a deist. However, in this innovative and well-researched account Peter Lillback and Jerry Newcombe prove definitively that George Washington was indeed a devout, practicing Christian.
The Islamic Antichrist: The Shocking Truth about the Real Nature of the Beast

So the list goes on...

And sadly, it's pretty clear from this point that Pat Condell is not being ironic and early on in the video Pat Condell makes it pretty clear that he's buying into conspiracy theories when he claims: "Just look at the craven behaviour that allowed the massacre at Fort Hood to take place. We know it could have been prevented. But thanks to political correctness in the American Army - the American Army? - all the warning signs were ignored in case somebody got offended." Condell doesn't go into details, but the idea that anyone could have predicted Nidal Hasan was about to go nuts and start a mass-shooting seems bizarre to say the least. We've had a fair number of shootings in the UK recently (and hand guns aren't even legal here) yet no one seems to be suggesting that they could have been predicted in advance. Those investigating Hasan's motives concluded that he was acting alone, but it looks like Pat Condell is probably more inclined to trust his new favourite book which asserts that Muslims are infiltrating the American government.

BTW Pat Condell's new favourite book claims that America is being infiltrated by a group called CAIR who, for the record, openly condemned the shooting in Fort Hood.

So Is The Book Right-Wing?
It's important to note that Pat Condell is quite desperate not to be seen as right-wing. He likes to think of himself as a liberal and he's angry that people keep noticing that he's not. So imagine my surprise (yeah right) when he decides to recommend a book with a foreword from Republican congresswoman Sue Myrick. Here's what she has to say on the subject:

"What they want to do is re-create the caliphate that happened . . . when they ruled the world." [Ruled the world???] Steps include plans to throw out our government and "throw out our Constitution and force us to live under sharia law."

Yeah, how're those plans going then? Nearing fruition are they? *facepalm*

She also reckons that Iranians are smuggling their way into America across the Mexican border by learning Spanish in six months. (Yeah, you read that right.)

Other politicians who decided to join Sue Myrick in attacking CAIR over the accusations in this book include:
Trent Frank - Voted amongst the "most conservative" members of the U.S. House of Representatives in 2009 by the National Journal. Opposes same-sex marriage and abortion. Infamously claimed that legalised abortion is worse for the African American community than slavery: "Half of all black children are aborted. Far more of the African American community is being devastated by the policies of today than were being devastated by the policies of slavery."
John Shadegg Voted against the Fair Minimum Wage Act of 2007, which increased the federal minimum wage from $5.15 to $7.25 an hour. Voted for a bill to build a 700-mile (1,100 km) fence along the border between the United States and Mexico (Secure Fence Act of 2006). Opposed health care reform, referring to it as "Soviet-style gulag healthcare".
Paul Broun In May 2009, Broun proposed legislation that 2010 be proclaimed "The Year Of The Bible". In June 2009, Broun voted against a climate change bill, calling the entire concept of man made global warming a "hoax" perpetuated by the scientific community.

If it weren't for Sue Myrick being brought in to write the foreword to the book, we might imagine that this book was being hi-jacked by right-wing figures. However, looking into the writer David Gaubatz we find more evidence of a similar ultra right wing stance than I could possibly go into here.

An advocacy group called CAIR (who've had some pretty harsh criticism for simply providing Rifqa Bary's parents with a lawyer) seem to be viewed by the writers of "Muslim Mafia" as a radical extremist group who are infiltrating the government. Their method? By the strategic placement of interns. CAIR's spokesman Ibrahim Hooper found it hard to take the book seriously precisely because: "the worst thing he could say about us was we placed interns on Capitol Hill"

In Conclusion
Perhaps I'm getting mixed up. Perhaps when Pat Condell says "if you've ever accused anyone of Islamophobia, read this book" then what he's actually saying is "this is REAL Islamophobia and anything else you've seen will pale by comparison".

Perhaps if Pat Condell actually read something a little less right-wing, he might have realised that the mosque he referred to in his last vid isn't actually a mosque.

Okay, so I'd pointed out the issues surrounding the Rifqa Bary case here and here, but here's a quick summary. She's a girl from a Muslim family who was indoctrinated by an evangelical Christian group who helped her run away with them. She now seems insistent that her parents want to kill her, but the courts have found much of what she has said has been false. Her claim that her blood is halal sounds more like something told to her by the evangelical Christians than language that Muslims in favour of honour killings might genuinely use. In initial interviews at that stage she was generally seen clinging to the evangelical group leader and surrounded by people with "Islam Is Of The Devil" t-shirts. It turns out that her parents are actually from a fairly moderate Islamic group, not least since they do not originate from a country where Islam is the dominant religion. Images of her cheerleading in the typical revealing outfit were displayed in the lounge while it's clear that the brother drinks alcohol - neither of which would be consistent with an overly strict Muslim upbringing. Accusations have been made that her parents' are actually illegal immigrants. She is now back in Ohio, but away from the evangelical group living with foster parents.

I think that tied up the most important details.

So here's the latest news. She has uterine cancer.

So what, yeah? I mean seriously what relevance does that have to anything? It's not like you could blame cancer on anyone..... oh wait a minute. Here's an article from Pamela Geller where she pretty much blames Rifqa Bary's medical condition on the parents. Wtf?

While this is a tragedy, how Rifqa is being victimized by her lawyers and her parents is nothing less than an atrocity. Her lawyers kept her in the dark about her condition -- despite the seriousness of her cancer -- for well over a week while they conferred with her parents and their CAIR-appointed lawyers about her treatment. While most cases like this result in a hysterectomy, Rifqa is only having the advanced malignancy removed. From what I understand, the survival rate in cases like these is only five percent.

Was she allowed to get a second opinion? No.

While she was lying ill, her lawyers brought her parents to her hospital bed. She was awaiting treatment and when she saw them, whereupon she became very agitated and upset. Her parents had to be removed.

The article later descends into conspiracy theories:

Will authorities then deport her?

There is no way of knowing for sure, but CAIR and the Muslim Brotherhood reportedly have infiltrated senior levels at the State Department so deeply that it is a distinct possibility.

O_O

(Via Right Wing Watch)

What originally seemed to me to be a rather dodgy story now seems dodgier than ever!

In my last post I noted that the family did not appear to be terribly radical, in spite of Rifqa's claims. In my last post I was also reacting to my discovery of Rifqa's rather disturbing style of prayer. (The 'Jesus Camp' style of breaking down in tears while ranting. One commenter on

atheism noted her prayer included the words "And the Lord will spit fire".)

Further news on this conference call where she demonstrated her style of prayer is that the Department of Children and Families (DCF) with whom she is in protective custody, had absolutely no idea that this had happened (nor, more worryingly, who could have arranged it):

( Read more... )

On Monday, DCF spokeswoman Carrie Hoeppner said the state agency "had no knowledge of this until it surfaced. Although she is 17, she remains in protective custody. Neither the Department nor do we believe her parents, gave permission for her participation in this call with strangers, which is of concern to us."

"Right now, we are working to get more background on the video such as when it posted and who arranged it."

Since then, an article has been written based on "court records, police reports, Brian Williams' diary, reporting in Orlando and Ohio, interviews with Rifqa Bary's friends and family, and her words — written on her laptop, said to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and spoken into video cameras and then disseminated on YouTube", so it's been pretty well researched.

First of the most vital points in the essay: Rifqa Bary's family were in the US for her sake.

( Read more... )

Second point: Not only was she not expected to join in with daily Islamic prayers, but her older brother also did not partake in prayer:

( Read more... )

Third point: She wrote that she was a Christian, carried books about Christianity by fundamentalist authors and even discussed her religious beliefs with her father!

( Read more... )

Fourth point: Not only did the parents blatantly know about her religious beliefs, but she was doing a very VERY bad job of hiding it.

( Read more... )

Fifth point: It's official. The Christian group she has joined is full of apocalyptic nutcases.

( Read more... )

Sixth point: Descriptions of her baptism seem rather bizarre.

( Read more... )

Seventh point: She did not leave through her own efforts, but was helped by a local family who knew in advance of her intention to leave. (This is actually possibly the most creepy part of the whole article.)

( Read more... )

Eighth point: Her last note to her supposedly bloodthirsty parents who she claims would kill her if they knew she was a Christian says that she hopes they will become Christians too and that she loves them dearly.

( Read more... )

So please take a look at the original article.

I've had a look for more recent videos related to Rifqa Bary and there's not much. There's a random rant from a guy called Paul F. Davis, which seems to be mainly just interested in promoting his book and there are a few random videos saying fairly unsubstantiated cr*p about Rifqa's parents having terrorist connections. Nevertheless, I did find this one report about the FDLE's findings, though it's rather lacking in information.

(Via Right Wing Watch)

x-posted to

atheism

Update: Someone on atheism has provided a clip of Rifqa Bary's 'testimony'. This is apparently 3 or 4 years after her conversion when she was 13, so this is very shortly before her decision to run away at 17. What is particularly strange about her claims in the video is that she says her family are "radical radical Muslims" yet in no images of her, even old photos, is she ever shown wearing a headscarf. She also never claims that the family were trying to arrange a marriage for her or actually makes any specific claims about what is radical about them. Seemingly her only reason for calling them radical is because she thinks they will kill her, but her only justification for this claim seems to be "because they have to", not because they've ever given any suggestion that they would do something like this. Anyway, what's interesting about this video is that it seems very similar to the child preaching in the documentary Jesus Camp; particularly the bit at the end where she says "raising up the generation that seek the face of God!" You can see for yourself, under the cut:
( Rifqa's testimony... )
Okay, if anyone isn't familiar with the Rifqa Bary case, she's basically a girl who claims that she has run away her parents because they will perform an "honour killing" on her for leaving Islam and converting to Christianity. However, in the first of the videos below you will see that even in a video which strongly sides against the parents, the girl is hysterical and the way she clings to the Christian pastor suggests that she is extremely disturbed. (There are two news reports under the cut for those who are unfamiliar with this case):

( See the two news reports here... )
There's a fairly long interview with the parents here. The father explains that he first heard about his daughter's Christian beliefs when she was 14 years old, so that would be 3 years ago. The mother looks absolutely devastated. The father explains that he allows his daughter not only to be a Christian, but also to wear the revealing cheerleading outfit and take part in her school cheerleading troupe. He also reminds us that their country of origin, Sri Lanka, is a predominately Buddhist country - not a Muslim one.:

The latest video I have discovered on Right Wing Watch shows a guest appearance from Rifqa Bary. As per usual she speaks erratically and (rightly or wrongly) shows a great deal of paranoia. However, if you skip to about 4:10 on the video you will hear her being asked to pray. At this point she barely makes any sense at all and really seems to be crying hysterically. When she suddenly stops praying abruptly there is a moment of shocked silence from the radio host and afterwards there is a call for a general prayer and the rest of the broadcast descends into chaos. - I must warn you, if you you decide to play this video, that I found it very disturbing:

Now maybe I'm misunderstanding how Christianity in the US works, but that sounds like a mentally disturbed girl. Far from making me fear a possible "honour killing", I feel much more concerned about the bizarre cult-like form of Christianity she is currently enrolled in.

x-posted to

atheism