There have been a good number of lies circulated by big media to counter what has recently been discovered about the Bary family finances. Today we saw the Orlando Sentinel paint the "doting father" - here is what Renee the rube reporter wrote in the Orlando Sentinel:
A source very close to Rifqa told me that Rifqa bought that computer out of her own money. It is so interesting (and disgusting) that the 'doting' dad is now claiming he should have never bought the computer.
I am hearing that the Bary parents have a new legal team. Who is paying for that?
Renee the rube reporter got it wrong -- here is the MySpace page from 2007:
People who know the Barys say Rifqa's allegations are crazy.
So these "people" say Rifqa is "crazy". Would you send Rifqa back to a town where they say she is crazy?
"There is no way this man would hurt his daughter," said Neil Javery,
52, a Hindu and family friend in Westerville, the Columbus suburb where
the Barys live.
[...]
Away from home, though, Rifqa was open about her
faith. She gathered with other students for "See you at the Pole," an annual
prayer service held at schools around the country. Until about three months ago,
she attended a youth group at the tiny Korean United Methodist Church in
Columbus.
The devout parents were worried about the separation of church and state? Say what? And if it was so "safe" for Rifqa to practice her Christian faith, why did she run? Why did she spend 20 hours on a bus? Why would she speak of such abuse?
Rifqa was a tiny newborn, just 5 pounds, and very quiet, Aysha Bary said. When Rifqa was 5, she fell onto a toy airplane. It left her blind in the right eye.
This story is a lie. She did not fall.
In 2004, he moved them to the Columbus area because of its excellent public schools.
By the time the Barys moved here, though, they were no longer wealthy. Two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mohamed Bary was on a business trip, flying with a bag of gems, as he often did. This time, the airline ordered him to check the bag. It was lost. It contained nearly $400,000 worth of jewels, said David Leung, 48, of Worthington, Ohio, a close family friend. Financially, the family has not recovered, he said.
I wonder how long it took to cook that one up. What about the $237,561 per annum he states he makes at Bary Gems? That is in his Dun and Bradstreet report. And mama is a regular small business entrepreneur.
Here is the same amount being cited in Mohamed Bary's application to the US Citizenship and Immigration Services. His application was denied. I wonder why.
The Barys live in a small, two-bedroom apartment and own one car, an 11-year-old Honda station wagon that has 225,000 miles on it.
A week ago, Rifqa's parents and brothers, ages 5 and 18, climbed into that car and drove 16 hours to Orlando for a court hearing. They had hoped the judge would order Rifqa back to Ohio.
What judge would order a child back to such a dangerous situation?
Anti-Muslim as opposed to life saving. How low will these trolls go?
He did not, but he sent his general counsel, Rob Wheeler, and DCF Secretary George Sheldon to the Aug. 21 hearing. While they sat watching, a DCF lawyer asked the judge to put off a decision on returning Rifqa to Ohio until Sept. 3. He did.
DCF also asked the judge to let the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigate whether Rifqa's father and other Muslims in Columbus are a threat to her. The judge said yes to that, as well.
FDLE agents and child welfare workers inspected the family's home and questioned Rifqa's parents last week.
"I'm happy they came," her father said. "We have nothing to hide."
He and his wife are modern Muslims, he said. Now, during the holy month of Ramadan, a time of prayer, they eat nothing between sunrise and sunset. Until this year Rifqa fasted with them.
Their prayers this year, her father said, are that Rifqa will come back to them.
"We want our daughter back home," he said. "She can practice whatever religion she wants."
Robert Spencer, today, on apostasy:
Salam al-Marayati of the Muslim Public Affairs Council, a thoroughly unpleasant character with whom I have appeared on many radio shows (on which he invariably likens me to Osama bin Laden, although I have never flown any planes into buildings, beheaded anyone, or exhorted anyone to do so), attacks Rifqa Bary, the seventeen-year-old girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled from her home and father after he threatened to kill her (as she explains here), and her supporters in a contemptuous, dishonest, condescending and arrogant piece at the Huffington Post, "Rifqa, the Reverand [sic] and Apostasy" (August 18).
Hugh Fitzgerald and Andy Bostom have already weighed in on this utterly contemptible article, but I have a few things to add.
Al-Marayati is intent on impugning Rifqa's own testimony in favor of her father's protestations that he does not intend to kill her -- and indeed, it is her word against his, and the only price we will have to pay if al-Marayati turns out to be wrong is a murdered teenage girl. To support his case, al-Marayati makes essentially two points, both encapsulated in this sentence: "Mohamed Bary allowed his daughter to become a cheerleader and says she can practice any faith she wants -- clearly, he is not a fundamentalist."
His first point is thus that Mohamed Bary, by allowing his daughter to prance around in skimpy cheerleader costumes, clearly was not the sort to insist on the finer points of Islamic law like the death penalty for apostasy (which al-Marayati implies does not exist anyway, so it's hard to see why it would be a feature of "fundamentalism" in the first place). However, honor killing victims in the West have invariably been girls who have been Westernized, adopting Western non-Muslim mores to the growing dismay of their male relatives. Al-Marayati's point is that if Mohamed Bary were a "fundamentalist," he would not have allowed Rifqa to become Westernized in the first place. Real life, however, is not always that simple. Honor killing victims like Amina and Sarah Said in Texas and Aqsa Parvez in Canada appear to been quite Westernized for a considerable period before their relationships with their fathers reached a tipping point, and they were murdered. Rifqa Bary fled before that could happen, but the fact that she was a hijab-less cheerleader indicates nothing. Pamela Geller explains further in responding to the same claim from Mike Thomas of the Orlando Sentinel:
Victims are generally beautiful, Westernized, and dressed in a manner that perhaps Thomas would term “provocative.” Muslim girls who live in the West lead two lives. Amina and Sarah Said, allegedly murdered by their father in Texas on New Year’s Day 2008 for having non-Muslim boyfriends, were honor students, star athletes, soccer players, tennis players, etc. Rifqa was the same way in Ohio before she fled. These girls led double lives. The murder always happens when the family sees they have lost control of the child.
Al-Marayati's second point is that, contrary to Rifqa's own claim, the Qur'an says nothing about killing apostates:
She claims that her parents "love God more than me" and therefore have to perform an honor killing on her. She argues "it's in the Quran". No it's not, sweet little Rifqa. It's not in the Quran. Whoever told you that is either ignorant or a liar. You should look it up yourself before claiming it's in the Quran.
Rev. Lorenz is then quoted in a local television station report saying that if a Muslim leaves his religion and does not return to Islam in a couple of days, then he must be killed. He claims that someone showed him the verse. There is no such verse, Rev. Lorenz. In every faith, apostasy is shunned but ultimate judgment is left to God, not people.
Two things are being confused here: honor killing and the death penalty for apostasy. Honor killing is not discussed directly in the Qur'an, although it is given strong implicit support by 18:74, 80-81, when the mysterious figure known in Islamic tradition as Khidr, traveling with the prophet Moses, kills a young man Moses terms "innocent" (18:74). Khidr explains: "And as for the lad, his parents were believers and we feared lest he should oppress them by rebellion and disbelief. So we desired that their Lord would give them in exchange (a son) better in purity (of conduct) and closer in affection." The young man is murdered because he is an unbeliever, so that his parents may be given a believing child in exchange. (Why the unbelieving son has to be killed before the believing son can be given to them is not explained.) Thus the precedent is set: a child who is an unbeliever is killed for his unbelief.
The death penalty for apostasy is found more directly in the Qur'an -- Islamic authorities generally root it in two Qur'anic verses, 2:217 and 4:89, as Hugh has noted. Here is 2:217:
They ask thee concerning fighting in the Prohibited Month. Say: "Fighting therein is a grave (offence); but graver is it in the sight of Allah to prevent access to the path of Allah, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members." Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter. Nor will they cease fighting you until they turn you back from your faith if they can. And if any of you turn back from their faith and die in unbelief, their works will bear no fruit in this life and in the Hereafter; they will be companions of the Fire and will abide therein.
What does it mean that the works of those who "turn back from their faith and die in unbelief" will "bear no fruit in this life" as well as in the next? Let's go for an answer to the Tafsir al-Qurtubi, a classic and thoroughly mainstream exegesis of the Qur'an. About 2:217, Qurtubi says this:
Scholars disagree about whether or not apostates are asked to repent. One group say that they are asked to repent and, if they do not, they are killed. Some say they are given an hour and others a month. Others say that they are asked to repent three times, and that is the view of Malik. Al-Hasan said they are asked a hundred times. It is also said that they are killed without being asked to repent.
Did you notice one option that Qurtubi never mentions? That's right: he never says anything like "some say the apostate should not be killed." The only point of contention seems to be how long the Muslim must wait before he kills the apostate.
Meanwhile, 4:89 says this:
They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they). But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks.
