Pamela Geller in Newsmax: Islamic Groups Intensify Fight Against Rifqa Bary

Sep 08, 2009

Rifqa Bary, the teenage girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled from her family after her father threatened her life, is still safe in Florida. But her ordeal is far from over. 

The Islamic media and political machine is kicking into high gear,
determined that Rifqa will not be free. The Islamists, the Council on
American-Islamic Relations (an un-indicted co-conspirator in a terror
finance case, which anti-Rifqa, pro-Islam Web sites say is working
closely with the family), the Noor mosque in Ohio that her parents
attend (which has numerous ties to Islamic extremists) and the others
who want to make an example of Rifqa were caught off guard when Judge
Daniel Dawson ruled that Florida had jurisdiction over Ohio in Rifqa's
first hearing on Aug. 21. They thought it was a done deal that Rifqa
would be returned to Ohio. 

She wasn't. And she wasn't again after a second hearing Sept. 3. So the
Islamic supremacists are making up for lost time now. They have brought
in the big guns. They have revved up their machine. They have fired the
old lawyers and brought in their lawfare specialists. 

The second hearing with the new legal team was hostile, ugly and tense.
Shayan Elahi, the new Islamist lawyer for Mohamed Bary, attacked
Rifqa's lawyer, John Stemberger, repeatedly and lobbied hard for the
court to appoint an attorney for Rifqa — one who would be more compliant
and less personally committed to Rifqa's welfare. This is the key
element of the strategy to isolate Rifqa from her support system of
people who love and care about her. Elahi has also filed petitions to
ban the Lorenzes (the Christian pastor and his wife who took Rifqa in
when she fled for her life), their children, and Rifqa's friends from
Ohio like Jamal Jivanjee, another convert from Islam to Christianity,
from visiting Rifqa. 

Dawson refused, though the adult Lorenzes will be restricted from
seeing Rifqa. At this she wept bitterly on the courtroom. Dawson is
fair-minded and is obviously placing Rifqa's well being above all else,
so the Islamic machine is going to try everything in its power to get
her out of his courtroom. Elahi says that he will soon file a Writ of
Prohibition in Florida's Fifth District Court of Appeals to stop the
proceedings. They want to move the case to Ohio, where Rifqa will be at
much greater risk of being returned to her family. 

To help accomplish that, Elahi is also filing for "psychiatric" evaluation of Rifqa. They can't say she is an "unruly delinquent," as
she has no history of promiscuity, drug abuse or alcohol. So they will
say she is crazy. 

Will they depose the uncle who allegedly sexually abused her? Her
mother knew about it and did nothing. I am sure the father didn't know,
as Rifqa would have been punished unmercifully: the female victim is
always at fault. How many lashes do rape victims get in Islamic
countries? 99.
There have been many other indications that Rifqa was physically
abused. On several occasions friends of Rifqa would bring her down to
the school counselor because of bruises on her legs and her arms, and
beatings suffered at the hands of her father and brother. The middle
school, in a serious dereliction of duty, did not report these beatings
to child welfare services. 

Beatings were random, violent, unprovoked. Take, for example, when
Rifqa and her father were driving in the car. He would force her to
wear the hijab, which she hated. In her discomfort she would slouch
down, embarrassed, and her father would haul off and sock her in the
face so that she never forgot to sit up straight in her costume. The
beatings were regular and so much a part of the landscape of Rifqa's
life that she became inured to them, just like Amina and Sarah Said,
who were allegedly murdered by their father in Texas for having
non-Muslim boyfriends; Aqsa Parvez, who was allegedly murdered by her
father in Canada for not wearing the Islamic headscarf; and every honor
killing victim. 

No one in the mainstream media picked any of this up. They are running
only the narrative that Rifqa's parents are the victims of "Islamophobia," and that the Florida Department of Law Enforcement
(FDLE) found no indication of abuse. 

Yet that report is questionable. When Dawson asked the FDLE to
investigate the Columbus, Ohio Islamic community to see if it posed a
threat to Rifqa, Omar Alomari, director of the Ohio Department of
Public Safety's Office of Multicultural Affairs, led FDLE investigators
on a wild goose chase. According to the Jawa Report, Alomari wrote a
booklet published by the ODPS, "Cultural Guide to Arabic and Islamic
Cultures." In it, he refers people to CAIR and to the Muslim
Brotherhood's U.S. arm, the Muslim American Society. 

The coverage of Rifqa Bary's hearing in the decrepit mainstream media
is appalling and dishonest. And with the Islamists the media loves so
much revving up their anti-Rifqa campaign, it's going to get even
worse.

The Truth Must be Told

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