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Why the facts in the Rifqa Bary case should matter to Christians

The objective facts of the Rifqa Bary case, viewed with a minimum of passion and maximum wisdom and discernment, certainly should matter, to Christians in particular. I write this post because today a report by the FDLE (Florida Department of Law Enforcement) addressing the claims of Rifqa Bary that her parents would allegedly kill her because she has converted from Islam to Christianity has been released, providing additional documentation of things I have known for some weeks now, but have not until now been at liberty to say.

It will astonish many conservatives, no doubt, to learn that a co-blogger at STACLU has vigorously defended in court one of the parents of Rifqa Bary and believes his former client’s cause is just. And there is little doubt that many on the left will be astonished to learn that a former attorney for one of Rifqa Bary’s parents blogs at STACLU. Yes, I was Aysha Risana Bary’s (Rifqa’s mother) attorney from August 10, 2009 until September 3, 2009. I hope it doesn’t come across as anything but a simple fact when I say to you, STACLU reader, that I know more about what is really going on in this case than you do — and we as Christians and conservatives ought to be interested in knowing what is really going on about controversial stories.

Let me give you a quick tour of my Christian, non-muslim-apologist bona fides before I continue. I found the Lord and became born again at the age of five and was raised in an evangelical tradition and environment. In other than my live appearance on FNC’s Fox and Friends August 27th, I have made my faith as a Christian clear to every journalist who has interviewed me about this case. I have served in uniform as an Army Reservist post-9/11. I am in civilian life an attorney who has been involved with probably close to a thousand cases involving child abuse and neglect, both on the side of the State, (a little aside: I almost lost my job way back for trying to save Terri Schiavo while I was a Florida DCF attorney — I was critical of Attorney General Charlie Crist in that case then and am critical of Governor Charlie Crist in this case now) and on the side of parents who have had the State dismantle their families. I have used this very blog to do what I can to encourage and defend Christian expression in our culture. I could go on, but hope I don’t have to. Bottom line, believe me or not, I am a Christian attorney who believes in working to advance the cause of Christ while I’m here in this fallen world.

And I also believe that many Christian conservatives have allowed themselves to adopt a narrative and thus reach conclusions about the Rifqa Bary case prematurely just as we rightly accuse the left-leaning MSM/drive-by/state-run media of sticking to their preferred narratives instead of squaring their passions with reality. Early on I all but plead with Christians to hit the pause button and wait for more investigation and facts. The implications of getting this wrong has pained me greatly.

Now to the facts. On the morning of August 10th, I was at the juvenile courthouse in Orange County, Florida, working, and observing people loudly making threats to bring in the media and the governor about some matter to be heard that day. Something seemed “off” about some of the personalities in this case immediately (and by that I do not mean the child herself). I was appointed to the case to defend Rifqa’s mom later that day. This did not happen purely by chance. As the person in my county who is routinely appointed to serve as an attorney ad litem to speak for children in foster care, I was asked to stick around because it was expected that I might very well become Rifqa’s attorney. When the attorney who had at first entered an appearance on behalf of Pastor Blake Lorenz later changed her position and declared that she in fact represented the child Rifqa, however, I was given the task of representing one of the parents in the case. It’s kind of inside baseball for most readers, but I was immediately struck by the strangeness of the Lorenz’ attorney spontaneously declaring an attorney-client relationship with the child in open court that hadn’t existed the moment before. That sense of strangeness remains relevant given a recent motion to clarify the roles of Rifaq’s four attorneys filed by DCF. In any event, I took the case on behalf of Rifqa’s mom and started digging, knowing from the beginning that the case had implications for people of my Christian faith and being determined to get it right.

By August 12th, I already had solid documentation that at least one thing circulating in the media and on blogs was flat wrong: that the parents had not reported the child missing for ten days. Not long after, I was able to nail down another misreported “fact”, that the child’s note left to her parents had not been given to police. Neither of those things are true. Why are those relatively mundane facts important? They are important because the person reporting them couldn’t possibly know those things, yet so-called adults surrounding Rifqa eagerly passed those things on to media without analysis, one imagines, because they served to paint the child’s parents in a bad light. Knowing that the key facts first presented here in Orlando were just plain wrong, and almost inexplicably wrong given that neither claim could possibly be known to anyone in Florida, I continued with my sense that something was “off” here, and kept digging.

I was annoyed as a Christian, as an officer of the court, and as a litigator, (in that order) that many with whom I agree on many issues were so willing to disregard the notion that a parent has the right in this country to raise and influence a child without governmental interference, unless there is evidence of abuse or neglect that is credible and not based on stereotypes or based on the beliefs or actions of what people who are not the parents might think, feel, or do. Consider this: a minor goes missing; an Amber Alert is issued; law enforcement officials develop information; that information leads police to a lead; that lead actually has knowledge of where the child is; despite the fact that the lead initially denies his knowledge of where the child is, police are able to put that together with a call to the National Center for Missing and Endangered Children, and then they find the missing child….. Yet the response of certain people involved with this case is to be outraged that the police did their jobs. Something is “off”.

Then came the FDLE report executive summary. It’s out there now. It confirms things I already knew. When Mohamed Bary personally showed me photographs of his daughter in a cheerleader outfit when we met for the second time on August 21st (he had driven from Ohio to Florida twice now to attend court hearings) I knew that claims that he had no idea that his child was a westernized and normal high school student were nonsense. Reading the FDLE report, I now have confirmation of several things I’d developed information about. I am no longer involved with this case as an attorney. It would be improper by this blog post to interfere with the Barys’ new attorneys and how they want to proceed. Let me just say this: if you can find a copy of the FDLE report on the web (the one distributed to the media has been redacted to remove names), you will know that every claim in this case so far that can be objectively and independently looked into, that isn’t a he-said, she-said about a conversation that you and I were not part of, is embellished or false. I don’t intend to litigate on a blog or go point-by-point about the FDLE report. I could, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that a growing list of otherwise uninterested people would have to be lying in order for what you think is true about this case to be true.

To my Christian readers I say that most of you likely had a heartfelt desire to protect a new convert to our faith. I can’t fault you there. Quite frankly I am happy that the child knows Jesus, but that is a personal feeling and not relevant to my previous job of defending these parents from the power of the State to take their family apart. Please recognize that the Lord is not so powerless as to need pastors and others to hide information, to embellish facts, or to give false witness in order to advance Christ’s Kingdom. You homeschoolers in particular ought to pause and weigh the power of the State to take your child into foster care against your feelings on this case and whether or not you would wish to be afforded a competent defense should religious biases be used against you some day.

To any readers who may be of the People for the American Way variety who blog about the hypocrisy of Christians, I simply present myself, an Evangelical Christian who believes in facts and law and has extended himself far out on a limb before his peers on behalf of Rifqa’s mother.

To any readers who may be Muslim, I invite you to explore the New Testament and I pray that you find the Way, the Truth, and the Life. See the paragraph above. Do not allow your reading of certain blogs to taint your feelings toward your Christian neighbors.

And to Rifqa, one year younger than my older child, I say that as a father and as a Christian, and as your mother’s former attorney, I care about you and have since August 10th. God bless you, and I believe that all things will work together for good.

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Posted by ArrMatey on September 14, 2009 10:53 pm

» Filed Under 1st Amendment, Bald-face lies, Bigotry, Bill Of Rights, Child Exploitation, Christianity, Church And State, Conservatism, Constitution, News

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