Fathima Rifqa Bary

I've been meaning to write about the Fathima Rifqa Bary case for the past month, but the case brings up a lot of emotions in me. That's because I did pretty much the same thing to my parents back in 1977. Thing is, I didn't run away to another state, I became a member of an obscure, very strict, Pentecostal sect. I also became a right royal pain in the ass to my family.

So I think I have a bit of insight into why Miss Bary did what she did, and I REALLY think that's the case after reading this article from today's Orlando Sentinel. Her parents found a flash drive with her writings and the writings of others on it and turned it over to the Council on American-Islamic Relations of Columbus, which provided it to the paper. Here are some excerpts:

A Muslim girl who gave her heart to Jesus and then ran away to Christian evangelists in Orlando is not just any Christian. She is driven to save souls and prays that God will make her a prophet.

That's according to writings she left behind when she fled.

"Lord is preparing me and He has me hidden ... until the time is right," Fathima Rifqa Bary wrote in a computer entry obtained by theOrlando Sentinel. "I am called to the nations. Send me to the deepest darkest places into the pagan land."

[. . .]

The writings reveal a young woman who has embraced fundamentalist Christianity, who has stood outside an abortion clinic, duct tape across her mouth, alongside other protesters, and who has dreamed about Armageddon.

She must convert her family to Christianity, she wrote, including her older brother, Rilvan, 18, who worships "demonic music." She must approach strangers and talk about Jesus. She saved a list of tips on how to do that:

"Do NOT be sneaky," she wrote. "Sit down ... get to know them ... [Ask] would you mind for 5min if I share the gospel with you."

She compared herself to the Old Testament heroine Esther and wrote out or saved religious pep talks.

"What does it take to be a prophet?" she wrote. "If I am a friend of God I can be prophetic. ... You have to want it. Everyday pray for prophesy."

Wow. I know of only one group whose members make a practice of standing outside of abortion clinics with duct tape across their mouths, and that would be Lou Engle's TheCall, which is currently joined at the hip with the International House of Prayer located in Kansas City, Missouri. What's ironic to me is that the Islamophobes are talking about how radical Miss Bary's father is, how radical her mosque is, etc., etc., etc. (None of this is proven, by the way.) But they fail to look at the people she's hanging out with and seeing how they're involved in movements that are even more inimical to American democracy than the alleged Moooooooslim threat, because these people are insinuated right in our society.

And if you think that I'm crazy, let's look a bit at the writings of her mentor, the guy who baptized her into Christianity, Brian Michael Williams, aged 23:

Williams prays with people by "laying my hands on the [computer] monitor and prophesying," Williams wrote. He calls Planned Parenthood's founder a racist Nazi, does not believe in evolution, speaks in tongues and criticizes mainstream Christians as following a "demonic doctrine" for being spiritually lethargic and failing to evangelize.

Williams baptized Rifqa in a creek near her home in June, he said, and helped her run away — unwittingly, he insists — by driving her to the Greyhound bus station in downtown Columbus.

To Rifqa's father, Williams is a Christian extremist who turned Rifqa against her family and put lies in her head.

Like I said, I really think I have a fair amount of insight into what's motivating Miss Bary, because I believed similar kinds of things back in 1977 (not the Planned Parenthood are a bunch of eugenicist Nazis, but similar). I remember having a prophetic dream when I was in this church, believing I'd been left behind at the Rapture and begging God when I awoke to "please take me." (I also worried that the Rapture would come and I would have never experienced "adult" things like marriage and a family. Thirty-two years have passed and I'm still not married and my family consists of two furballs. Oh yeah, and no Rapture.)

[Question: Why isn't Brian Michael Williams in jail for aiding and abetting a runaway, along with Blake Lorenz? Oh. It's because he's a member of the dominant religion, and there's nothing to keep them from doing what they're doing, short of actually killing someone.]

I have more to say about this, but I have to go to work to keep a roof over the heads of the aforementioned furballs that let me be their personal valet. Laters.