Turning the tables

Yet another story illustrating the point that one truly must read past the article title and first few line to get at the truth. A teenage girl from Ohio ran away from her Muslim parents and household because, she said, she feared for her life – apparently her Islamic family were threatening to kill her for becoming a Christian.

Problem is, that's a total fabrication. (The parents-trying-to-kill-her part, that is.)

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A 17-year-old girl who ran away from her Ohio home to Florida says she fears her parents will harm her for converting from Islam to Christianity, but her parents dismiss her claim and say she was brainwashed.

Her parents also question how the girl ended up in the home of a Florida family she met through an online prayer group. Authorities are trying to determine whether the girl, Rifqa Bary, should stay in state custody or be returned to her family in Ohio.

"We love her, we want her back, she is free to practice her religion, whatever she believes in, that's OK," her father, Mohamed Bary, told The Associated Press on Thursday.

Reading the article, this seems like a very clear case of a teenage girl being utterly brainwashed by a Christian group into running away from her parents. Hell, even the local police reportedly doubt her claims (which, reading between the lines, means they think she's full of shit). The evidence against Rifqa's case is certainly not shortcoming:

Police investigating the girl's July 19 disappearance used phone and computer records to track her to the Rev. Blake Lorenz, pastor of Orlando-based Global Revolution Church, who called authorities Aug. 6 to say she was staying with them.

With Lorenz holding his arm tightly around her, Rifqa told WFTV in Florida on Monday that she would be killed if she came home.

[...]

An Orlando judge on Monday ordered the girl into the custody of Florida's Department of Children and Families until another hearing next week.

[...]

Rifqa, a high school junior in well-off suburban New Albany, had been questioning her faith for several months, her father said. She attended church with friends from school and later attended services at another church, Xenos Christian Fellowship, a megachurch that emphasizes small groups meeting at home.

The church has no record of her being a member but says it's possible given the size of the church — nearly 5,000 members, said spokesman Jay Reilly.

After Rifqa proselytized with a Bible at school, Mohamed Bary said, the family asked her to stop because it wasn't an appropriate activity in school. They also told her she had an obligation to study her original faith first, before choosing another.

But Mohamed Bary says they never threatened to kill or harm the girl. "She is still my daughter," said Bary, 47, a jeweler.

The family says Rifqa was baptized a Christian without their knowledge this year in Columbus. Around the same time, the girl met Lorenz through an online Facebook prayer group.

Rifqa's 18-year-old brother, Rilvan, said the family has its own worries about her well-being.

"We don't think the safest person is the pastor she met two weeks ago on Facebook," Rilvan Bary said.

[My emphasis]

You can say that again. Judging from the full report, and especially from the excerpts I've underlined, this sounds like a rather open-and-shut case: young influenceable girl forms doubts about her religion, meets bible-thumping Christian fundies, gets brainwashed by said fundies into secretly joining their group, and is subsequently "warned" that her family (demented Muslims, of course) is going to kill her for the conversion. I can imagine very few 17-year-old girls (or guys) with the experience, maturity and critical thought to help them realize they're being hoodwinked, especially when falling prey to such sophisticated and expert con-people as fundamentalist churches tend to be.