Thirty little buses in New York City…my, how they roll. Through our organization Stop Islamization of America, Robert Spencer and I have placed ads on New York City buses, offering help to Muslims wishing to leave Islam. Our ads ran previously on buses in Miami, but in New York they’ve received international notice. The religious liberty bus ad campaign was covered in the last few days by every major network: ABC, NBC, CBS (New York), CNN and FOX, as well by Associated Press, Reuters, the Los Angeles Times, Britain’s Daily Mail, Russian television, and many more–too many news outlets to list here.

It’s no surprise that most mainstream media outlets that have covered the story have just repeated talking points from the unindicted co-conspirator, Hamas-linked Muslim Brotherhood front, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). AP said: “some Muslims are calling the ads a smoke screen for an anti-Muslim agenda.” Which Muslims are saying that? Farther down in the article we find out: (more…)

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.

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…)

A girl flees from her home in fear for her life – and law enforcement goes after the people who helped her.  That’s the situation in the Rifqa Bary case.

The Columbus Dispatch reported this about Rifqa’s friend Brian Williams:

An Ohio minister accused of driving a teenage runaway to a bus station last year has retained a lawyer as police say they’re investigating whether anyone broke the law in helping the Christian convert leave home for Florida.

And why did she flee to Florida? Because, she says, when her devout Muslim father found out she had become a Christian, he said to her, “I will kill you.” And with Islam’s death penalty for apostates, she had to take that seriously. But her father is not in danger of being prosecuted. Brian Williams is. (more…)