August 29th, 2009 // comments (4)

Anti-Muslim Hysteria In The Rifqa Bary Case

[Rifqa Bary in a Florida courtroom]

A 16-year-old girl runs away from home. She hops a bus from Ohio to Florida and shacks up with a few friends she met on Facebook. Her parents plead for her return and the state of Florida gets involved. If Rifqa Bary was just another runaway, the story would end here. She would have been sent back to Ohio to live with her family and authorities in her home state could hash out any further issues. There’s just one problem: Rifqa’s parents are Muslims.

When I cracked the mic to kick off The News Junkie Radio Show last Saturday, I had no clue the reaction to this story would be so one-sided. Nearly every caller felt the need to inform me of the ‘traditional’ Islamic punishment for Apostasy. You see, Rifqa Bary renounced her faith. And those ‘friends’ she met on Facebook were actually Blake and Beverly Lorenz of the Global Revolution Church in Orlando. She laid low with them for nearly three weeks before a well orchestrated presser where she claimed her parents would kill her if she was forced to return home. She directed any doubting Thomas within earshot to ‘ask Pastor Lorenz’ and insisted it was all ‘in the Koran.’

[Blake and Beverly Lorenz]

No doubt the pastor and the majority of callers to my radio show were referring to one of several passages in the Hadith. The most commonly referred saying is Sahih al-Bukhari 9:84:57, ‘kill whoever challenges his religion.’ It’s worth noting that even some of the most radical Islamists take the word ‘his’ to mean the judgment only applies to males, suggesting that life imprisonment — one floor short of execution in the crazy building — is the correct punishment for women who commit apostate.

One caller to my show (forgive me, I can’t remember his name) was appalled that I could possibly think Rifqa should be sent back to her parents ‘to die.’ I asked him if he was a Christian and an avid reader of the Bible. His answer was revealing, ‘I believe in the Bible but I don’t take it literally.’ Was there no way that this young girl’s parents were Muslims who felt the very same way about their holy book? Conservative bloggers weighed in and they certainly didn’t think so.

[Dr. Herbert London]

Herbert London fanned the flames at HumanEvents.com, calling Rifqa Bary his ‘Joan of Arc.’ ‘Apostasy is regarded as a capital offense in the Koran and punishable by death,’ London wrote, forcefully suggesting that to send this girl home would be to sign her death warrant. Robert Spencer, of the website Jihad Watch, called the ongoing debate a ‘vile game’ saying if those who disagree with him win ‘their prize could be a dead girl.’ Not to be outdone, Pamela Geller, in between posts insisting President Barack Obama’s certificate of live birth is a fake, labeled those who argue in support of the parents as ‘cultural jihadists‘ and continued to lay out a case for why Rifqa Bary would obviously be killed if the state of Florida dared release her to her evil family.

Those who are in agreement with Geller, Spencer and the majority of callers to my radio show on Chicago’s WGN Radio 720, believe that statements in the Hadith — which is simply a supplement to Islam’s holy book, the Koran — should be considered in cases questioning parental rights. This is both foolish and dangerous for a million reasons but the most glaring is found in Christianity’s holy book, the Bible.

Let’s take a look at Deuteronomy 21:18-22:

18 If a man have a stubborn and rebellious son, which will not obey the voice of his father, or the voice of his mother, and that, when they have chastened him, will not hearken unto them:

19 Then shall his father and his mother lay hold on him, and bring him out unto the elders of his city, and unto the gate of his place;

20 And they shall say unto the elders of his city, This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton, and a drunkard.

21 And all the men of his city shall stone him with stones, that he die: so shalt thou put evil away from among you; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.

(For those of you who question the verse or its source, I walked to the nearest book store — on State St. in downtown Chicago — and took a snapshot of Deuteronomy 18 with my cell phone.)

According to Gallup, one-third of Americans believe the Bible is literally true. So are we to take action to remove all delinquent children from Christian homes so as to prevent them from the inevitable stoning? Critics will insist that these ‘honor killings’ in the name of Islam actually happen, right here in the United States. They’ll point out the Texas cab driver who brutally killed his two daughters for dating non-Muslims. Or they might bring up the story of Chaudhry Rashid, who killed his daughter after she hinted at a coming divorce. They’ll bring up these nightmare scenarios and convince anyone willing to listen that this is quite common in Muslim families and because the Bary’s are recent immigrants from Sri Lanka they’re somehow even more likely to be radical. But the same argument could be made to support the ridiculous idea of taking bad kids from the care of Christians.

[Andrea Yates on trial for murder]

Andrea Yates was a mother of five from Houston, Texas. On June 20, 2001, Yates filled a bathtub in her house to the brim and drowned her three youngest sons (Luke, Paul and John) before tossing her infant daughter Mary and finally her oldest son Noah in that same bathtub to suffer a similar fate. She did this to ‘please God’ and ’save [the children] from Hell.’

[Deanna Laney with her family in 2003]

Let’s skip over to Tyler, Texas, where Deanna Laney crushed her 6 and 8-year-old sons skulls with rocks, killing them. Her 14-month-old son escaped with severe injuries. Laney killed her sons because — you guessed it — God told her to do so. She even had Deuteronomy 21:18 (and loads of other scripture) to back her up. I could follow this up with a story about a mother who killed her 3 1/2-week-old baby boy and ate his fucking brains but I’ll spare you the more gory details.

The point is, it would be just as easy to argue Texans or Jews or Christians in the same situation wouldn’t be fit parents. It would also be just as ignorant. Muslims are no more required to follow their religious texts with some zombie-like inability to resist than a Christian would be. It just seems a whole lot easier and (perhaps more disturbingly) more acceptable to target Muslims with this logic.

[Mohamed Bary and his wife answer questions]

Rifqa Bary should be pried from the grips of Charlie Crist, the Global Revolution Church and the state of Florida and sent back to Ohio. Authorities in Ohio can investigate any claims the teenager would like to make and, if the coast is clear, she can live out the rest of her juvenile life in the care of her parents. Since Ohio doesn’t have emancipation for teens, this is the best legal route. There’s room for disagreement and debate but the way the state of Florida and, frankly, many of the callers to my radio show rushed to judgment here is disturbing. What a colossal mess.

Please direct your hate mail to: ShawnWasson -AT- Gmail.com

Related:

• December 15, 2009 -- SUSPENDED FOR THIS?
• December 4, 2009 -- WORST MOM EVER
• May 4, 2009 -- Christian Warriors?: Soldiers In Afghanistan Push Religion
• January 19, 2009 -- ‘Busty’ Virgin Mary Controversy
• December 18, 2008 -- Female ‘Wise Man’ Dies During Play
• December 12, 2008 -- Mexican Playboy: Topless Virgin Mary