Judge Sentences Rifqa Bary to Death

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A Florida Judge sentenced 17 year-old Rifqa Bary to death Tuesday when he ruled that she must be returned to the custody of her parents.  Rifqa fled home amid death threats from her parents for converting from Islam to Christianity.

I hate reporting on tragedies in this blog, but I have no choice here.  What has happened here is nothing less than sending the girl straight into a death trap.  How can I say this?  Well, Islamic law flat out states that apostates from Islam must be killed.  Look up the hadiths online and you will find this.  It is not that hard.

The phenomenon of "honor killings" is not just some right-wing anti-Muslim invention.  It is a real fact of life in the Muslim world and, increasingly, here in the West.  I will lay out a few examples.

- On January 1, 2008, 18 year old Amina Said and 17 year old Sarah Said were murdered by their father, Yasser Said, after he discovered that the two had boyfriends.  He fled shortly thereafter and remains at large.  This was right here in the United States

- On December 10, 1991, a 16 year old girl named Aqsa Parvez was strangled to death by her father, her shortly thereafter called police to turn himself in.  Her crime?  She refused to wear the hijab, the traditional Muslim headscarf.  Location?  Mississauga, Ontario, Canada.

- In 2005, the German newsweekly Der Spiegel reported that "In the past four months, six Muslim women living in Berlin have been brutally murdered by family members"; a particularly prominent case was that of Hatun Sürücü, who was murdered by her brother after she divorced the cousin she had been forced to marry at 16 and reportedly began dating a German man.

- In March 2009, Turkish immigrant Gülsüm S. was killed by her family when they discovered she was in a relationship outside their plan for an arranged marriage.

- In 2002, London native Heshu Yones was stabbed to death by her father.  Her family had heard a love song dedicated to her and suspected she had a boyfriend.

These are just a few examples of honor killings.  Rifqa Bary didn't have a boyfriend, but she did do something that's considered even worse than that by Islamic law; she left Islam for another religion.  The Florida judge has made an error that puts her life in danger by this ruling.  May God forgive him.

We must pray for Rifqa.  Pray that this ruling will be reversed and that she will be allowed to live her life in peace so that she may follow the Lord, free to worship him without fear all the days of her life (reference Luke 1:74)

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