# So are this kid's parents going to kill her, or what? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 25, 2009, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636 "2009-08-25T15:17:55Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/1 "2009-08-25T15:17:55Z")
Two things: 1) I’m not sure where to put this. I actually want an answer to this question, but I can smell a debate in the air. 2) Sorry if this has been brought up, but I couldn’t find it through a search, and am not going to spend 35 minutes using this chickenshit search function to be certain. So… Fox News has been vigorously covering this story about a teenage Ohio girl who converted to Christianity from Islam, then fled to Florida (Really? Why Florida) for fear of being the victim of an “honor killing.” I’ve never really paid much attention to the story, and initially dismissed it with a, “Oh joy, they’re doing another Muslims Kill Christians” story. [Link](http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,541205,00.html). But then this little sentence jumped out at me: “If I had stayed in Ohio, I wouldn’t be alive,” she said. “In 150 generations in family, no one has known Jesus. I am the first — imagine the honor in killing me.” Wait – what? Imagine? So is this story based entirely on conjecture? Apparently, this all came from blogs she wrote, describing how she feared for her life. So then I thought, Wait a minute. Are her parents _actually_ going to kill her, or is this just fear dreamt up by the Christians who converted her? Has the family ever said anything about killing her? Have they ever expressed disapproval of her new religion? The only thing I’ve been able to get that even resembles a statement from the family is this: “I love my daughter and I want her to come back to the family,” he said, declining further comment. No one seems to be covering this except Fox and some Christian news places. Google isn’t helping, and I’ve never seen it brought up on any other channel. Does anyone else know this story? Is this girl’s fear based on anything her family actually said or done? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/2 "2009-08-25T15:20:52Z")
I don’t know why you would be so incredulous. There are honor killings in Islam all the time and the Koran prescribes death to apostates. I mean there are multiple news items a day on this topic worldwide. Obviously the Father is not going to tell the news that he wants to kill his daughter. And maybe he isn’t going to kill her. But she is afraid, and rightly so, because it’s common amongst her religion. Apostasy is the worst crime there is in Islam as I understand it. That doesn’t mean that he WILL kill her, but she might believe it. ---
**Author:** ![madmonk28](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/madmonk28/32/20811_2.png) [@madmonk28](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/madmonk28)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/3 "2009-08-25T15:23:38Z")
Well there are all kinds of crimes committed by all kinds of religious nuts. Is there any evidence that this particular family is interested in killing this particular girl? ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/4 "2009-08-25T15:25:22Z")
This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the term “honor killing,” and this actually reminds me of a similiar story that happened here in the US recently involving a teenage girl. The one I’m thinking of, though, involved actual threats from the girl’s father. All I’m getting from this coverage is the girl afraid, and not much else. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/5 "2009-08-25T15:26:58Z")
Well, yes, the story makes it pretty clear it’s on conjecture: > [@](#): > > In an emotional six-minute interview with WFTV in Florida, Rifqa, who met Lorenz through an online Facebook group, said she expects to be killed if she is forced to return to Ohio. > [@](#): > > Dr. Phyllis Chesler, an author and professor of psychology at the Richmond College of the City University of New York, said she believes Bary will be in danger if she is sent back to her parents. > > “Anyone who converts from Islam is considered an apostate, and apostasy is a capital crime,” Chesler wrote [FOXNews.com](http://FOXNews.com). “If she is returned to her family, if she is lucky, they will isolate her, beat her, threaten her, and if she is not ‘persuaded’ to return to Islam, they will kill her. They have no choice.” Here’s a [Time](http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918228,00.html?xid=rss-topstories) article: > [@](#): > > . Then, a few days later, Rifqa dropped a bombshell to an Orlando television station: she had run away, she claimed, because her family, angry about her conversion to Christianity, had “threatened to kill me.” > > Wearing a white dress and a silver cross, her dark hair often falling over her scared eyes, the small and slender Rifqa insisted in the TV interview (now on YouTube) that her father Mohamed Bary, a Columbus jeweler, “said he would kill me or send me back to Sri Lanka,” where she said “they have asylums where they put people like me.” She said her death would be a Muslim “honor killing,” the kind of murder that women in deeply conservative Muslim societies are sometimes victims of when they’re deemed to have shamed their families. (The U.N. Population Fund estimates that there are as many as 5,000 worldwide honor killings every year.) Rifqa said that her father, upon discovering her Facebook profile and its declarations of her Christian faith, told her, “If you have this Jesus in your heart, you’re dead to me, you’re not my daughter.” She added, almost hysterically, “They have to kill me … I want to worship Jesus freely. I don’t want to die!” > > t’s a serious charge that any law-enforcement or social-services official would have to look into, particularly since there have in fact been some extremely rare instances of honor killings in the U.S. Most recently two Dallas-area sisters were murdered last year, allegedly by their Egyptian-born Muslim father, who relatives say was enraged that his daughters, 18 and 17 years old, were dating non-Muslim boys. (The father is still at large and is believed to have fled the country.) But Mohamed Bary and his wife Aysha adamantly insist it is “completely false” that they ever threatened to kill Rifqa over her conversion. “We love her; we want her back. She is free to practice her religion, whatever she believes in. That’s O.K.,” Mohamed told the Associated Press last week. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/6 "2009-08-25T15:29:32Z")
> [@MeanOldLady](#): > > This isn’t the first time I’ve heard the term “honor killing,” and this actually reminds me of a similiar story that happened here in the US recently involving a teenage girl. The one I’m thinking of, though, involved actual threats from the girl’s father. All I’m getting from this coverage is the girl afraid, and not much else. Well this girl wasn’t 25 and it wasn’t over apostasy, but here is [an honor killing that happened in Georgia](http://www.nypost.com/seven/07232008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/an_american_honor_killing_121118.htm). ---
**Author:** ![MeanOldLady](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/meanoldlady/32/10737_2.png) [@MeanOldLady](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MeanOldLady)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/7 "2009-08-25T15:39:59Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Here’s a [Time](http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1918228,00.html?xid=rss-topstories) article: Thanks for the article! Things three and four: 3) Anyone see the interview on YouTube? Good gods. And 4) [[QUOTE=Time.com](http://QUOTE=Time.com)] If Rifqa’s claims are indeed false, that raises the question of whether she may have been prodded by her new friends at Global Revolution Church to make the death-threat accusations, and whether she was somehow lured to Orlando by the Lorenzes via the Internet. The couple, who could not be reached for comment, have denied it to the media. But Beverly Lorenz has acknowledged that she talked by phone with Rifqa before the girl ran away. Blake Lorenz, who insists that Rifqa will be killed if she goes home, earlier this month made clear to reporters his Crusades-era belief that this is part of Christianity’s holy struggle against Islam: “These are the last days; these are the end times,” he said, “and this conflict between Islam and Christianity is going to grow greater. This conflict between good and evil is going to grow greater.” As a result, says McCarthy, "you wonder if people have been stoking this fear in her head, telling her, ‘This is what the Koran says will happen to you.’ " [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![treis](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/bc79bd/32.png) [@treis](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/treis)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/8 "2009-08-25T15:45:04Z")
It’s really difficult for me to believe that a Muslim lenient enough to allow his daughter to be a cheerleader would be dogmatic enough to kill her for converting. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/9 "2009-08-25T15:51:32Z")
> [@treis](#): > > It’s really difficult for me to believe that a Muslim lenient enough to allow his daughter to be a cheerleader would be dogmatic enough to kill her for converting. Good point. ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/10 "2009-08-25T15:51:51Z")
Should have waited a year to get that Jesus in your heart, Rifqa. Wait just a damn minute… these evangelical Christians in Florida harbored a runaway minor for three weeks before letting authorities know where she was? They better damn well be facing some charges. ---
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 3:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/11 "2009-08-25T15:56:07Z")
> [@madmonk28](#): > > Well there are all kinds of crimes committed by all kinds of religious nuts. Is there any evidence that this particular family is interested in killing this particular girl? It’s not nuts, religious or otherwise. While this kind of thing is endorsed in the Qur’an, it’s actually taken directly from the more barbaric tribal practices of the Bedoins and Arabs (IIRC, it was common throughout Central Asia, and still is). They may get a nice clean feeling, but it was going on long before Islam. And I am a man with no love for Islam. ---
**Author:** ![davidw](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/c4cdca/32.png) [@davidw](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/davidw)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/12 "2009-08-25T16:02:18Z")
Of course we don’t really know what might happen, and whether the threat is real or not. But I have to say, I get more of the “religious nut” vibe from the Florida Christians than I get from her parents. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/13 "2009-08-25T16:05:19Z")
Just because honor killings happen “all the time” doesn’t mean it’s a given that it was going to happen here. It’d be like assuming Japanese parents would use karate on their kid for not liking sushi. ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/14 "2009-08-25T16:07:58Z")
Sounds like bullshit to me. We have no evidence other than the word of the girl that her parents want to kill her, and she’s obviously under the influence of her church. This kid has essentially been kidnapped by a cult. This Lorenz couple sounds like a couple of zealots making their assumptions based on their twisted assumptions about Muslims rather than any actual threats. I think they want this kid as a trophy, and the whole death threat contrivance is just a way to get publicity. Pretty disgusting that these kinds of Christians feel the need to browbeat other people’s kids into converting to their religion at all. Does Jesus really want people to divide and destroy families like that? The husband probably just wants to molest the kid. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/15 "2009-08-25T16:09:31Z")
> [@wierdaaron](#): > > Just because honor killings happen “all the time” doesn’t mean it’s a given that it was going to happen here. It’d be like assuming Japanese parents would use karate on their kid for not liking sushi. Well just like it in that it’s not like it at all. I can come up with stories all day of honor killings in Islam. Can you come up with a single story of a Japanese parent using karate on their kid for not liking sushi? ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/16 "2009-08-25T16:10:23Z")
Her parents have said unequivocally that this is ridiculous. Their children are Westernized. This girl was even a cheerleader. It is more suspicious to me, anyway, that she was in contact with the minister’s wife in Florida before she ran away, and that they kept her there in secret for three weeks. Isn’t there a legal term for that? “Custodial interference” or something? (I’m hot for these wacko Christians to face some charges.) Honor killings don’t happen “all the time” in the United States, is a very important distinction to make here. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/17 "2009-08-25T16:10:34Z")
> [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](#): > > Sounds like bullshit to me. We have no evidence other than the word of the girl that her parents want to kill her, and she’s obviously under the influence of her church. This kid has essentially been kidnapped by a cult. This Lorenz couple sounds like a couple of zealots making their assumptions based on their twisted assumptions about Muslims rather than any actual threats. I think they want this kid as a trophy, and the whole death threat contrivance is just a way to get publicity. Pretty disgusting that these kinds of Christians feel the need to browbeat other people’s kids into converting to their religion at all. Does Jesus really want people to divide and destroy families like that? > > The husband probably just wants to molest the kid. LOL speaking of things we have no evidence for… ---
**Author:** ![Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e99b99/32.png) [@Diogenes\_the\_Cynic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diogenes_the_Cynic)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/18 "2009-08-25T16:19:06Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > LOL speaking of things we have no evidence for… Just using the same logic they’re using. I can show examples of Christians sexually abusing kids all day, therefore these Christians will certainly sexually abuse this kid. ---
**Author:** ![lisacurl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/41988e/32.png) [@lisacurl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lisacurl)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/19 "2009-08-25T16:21:26Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Well just like it in that it’s not like it at all. I can come up with stories all day of honor killings in Islam. Can you come up with a single story of a Japanese parent using karate on their kid for not liking sushi? I suspect you could come up with stories all day of honor killings in particular tribal areas. Ignorance and hatred done in the name of religion. We have a crapton of it here in our own country as well. ---
**Author:** ![wierdaaron](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/eada6e/32.png) [@wierdaaron](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/wierdaaron)\ **Post date:** [August 25, 2009, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636/20 "2009-08-25T16:22:09Z")
Ok, for a better example, it would be like a girl being afraid her christian parents would hang, burn, stone, or crush her under boulders for converting to wicca. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/so-are-this-kids-parents-going-to-kill-her-or-what/507636.md?page=2)