Rifqa Bary is the 17-year-old girl who converted from Islam to Christianity and fled from her family in fear for her life. For more than nine months now, the Islamic machine has been trying to make an example of her, as a warning that even in the U.S., those who try to leave Islam will fail. Rifqa’s entire legal strategy, meanwhile, has hinged on ignoring the Islamic aspects of the case, although Islam’s death penalty for apostasy is the only thing that explains why she is in danger. Instead, her lawyers are trying to obtain for her Special Immigration Juvenile Status (SIJS). And in this yet again her parents’ aggressive and manipulative attorney, Omar Tarazi, has outfoxed them.

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This was her lawyers’ objective, the end run: if they could keep Rifqa out of her dangerous home environment and secure immigration status, then it didn’t matter how they did it, as long as the goal was achieved. What her legal team did not understand was the nature of the threat and the enemy Rifqa faced. They were playing by a set of rules that were inapplicable to the challenge they faced. By pretending that Sharia was not the elephant in the room, they were out-strategized.

I remember back last September when I spoke to Rifqa’s Florida attorney, John Stemberger, on the phone and asked him why apostasy was not being introduced. It defined the threat to her life. Without the motive, there was no threat. He insisted that it wasn’t necessary. He said there was no way she would be sent back to Ohio from Florida, where she had fled to get as far away from her father as possible. “No way” would she be made to go back to Ohio, Stemberger said. In order to get Rifqa sent back to Ohio, he explained, her parents would have to open a court case, and in order to do that they would have to admit to some kind of abuse. And Stemberger said they would never do that. (more…)