A very interesting article by Sheila Musaji on the early presence of Muslims in the Americas and how this is driving Islamophobes crazy.:

Moriscos, Marranos, Columbus, and Islamophobes

by Sheila Musaji (The American Muslim)

Pamela Geller was horrified by comments reportedly made at the recent Jumah at the DNC event. She comments on an article in the Washington Times that quoted one of the organizers, Jibril Hough,  as saying :

“Muslims visited America prior to Columbus. It was a Muslim who guided Columbus on his voyage to the new world.”

Geller find this a “desecration of American history”, and “Islamic supremacist historical revisionism”.

Interestingly, on the same day that I read Geller’s comments, I received an anti-Muslim email titled “Muslim Heritage in America?” which opened with Have you ever been to a Muslim hospital, heard a Muslim orchestra, seen a Muslim band march in a parade, witnessed a Muslim charity, shaken hands with a Muslim Girl Scout, seen a Muslim Candy Striper, or seen a Muslim do anything that contributes positively to the American way of life ????  The answer is no, you did not. Just ask yourself WHY ???.  It then claims that Muslims never contributed anything to America, never fought in any of our wars, never participated in the civil rights movement, etc.  It then went on to pretty much repeat the Can a good Muslim be a good American email that goes around every year or so.  Except for the Muslim band marching in a parade, I have seen all of these things.

Geller’s comments (picked up and spread by the Islamophobia echo chamber on the web), and this email are part of the Islamophobes ongoing campaign to paint American Muslims as “the other”, and not part of American history, or for that matter part of American society at all.  Some time ago, I wrote an article Muslims are a part of our American heritage discussing the long history of Muslims in America.  That article clearly shows that they are wrong on all counts.

Whether or not Jibril Hough’s comments are accurate historically is certainly a matter of debate for historians.  There are many theories about Norse, Irish (St. Brendan) **, Chinese, Phoenician, African, Arab, Japanese, etc. groups having reached North or South America prior to Columbus. **  None of these claims can be proven absolutely, and some have more evidence than others to be considered as possibilities.  There is certainly no supremacism involved in believing that any of these might be true.

1492, the year of Columbus’ voyage was the same year that Ferdinand and Isabella completed the Reconquista and captured Granada. At that time Muslims and Jews were given a choice to either convert, go into exile, or face the Inquisition.  Among both communities some became Moriscos (Muslims) or Marranos (Jews) who chose “conversion” to Christianity.  In some cases they were actually converts, but more often only pretended to convert in order to save themselves.

There have been many claims by both the Jewish and Muslim communities that there were Moriscos and/or Marranos who were on Columbus voyages.  In fact, some have even claimed that Columbus himself was a Marrano **.

Some of those who have been identified as Morisco/Marrano are:  Luis Torres, a translator Columbus brought along to speak to people in the Far East (where he thought he was going) and who spoke Hebrew and Arabic **, Rodrigo de Triana, Maestre Bernal, Pedro Alonzo Nino, etc.  **

It would certainly not be outside the realm of possibility that Moriscos and/or Marranos were among those who sailed with Columbus.  Although both categories of people were forbidden to emigrate to the “New World” by Spanish law, Paul Lunde wrote a lengthy article explaining how this was probably overcome in the article Muslims And Muslim Technology In The New World.

Another academic article Turks, Moors, & Moriscos in Early America: Sir Francis Drake’s Liberated Galley Slaves & the Lost Colony of Roanoke by Umar Faruq Abd-Allah, Ph.D. discusses

One very unusual and little-known event took place at the dawn of American colonial history in 1586. That year, Sir Francis Drake (1540-1596), the famous English seaman, discoverer, and privateer, brought at least two hundred Muslims (identified as Turks and Moors, which likely included Moriscos) to the newly established English colony of Roanoke on the coast of present-day North Carolina. The Roanoke settlement was England’s first American colony and constitutes the first chapter of English colonial history in the New World and what ultimately became the history of the United States. Only a short time before reaching Roanoke, Drake’s fleet of some thirty ships had liberated these Muslims from Spanish colonial forces in the Carribbean.  They had been condemned to hard labor as galley slaves.

Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf wrote in an article Five myths about Muslims in America

Historians estimate that up to 30 percent of enslaved blacks were Muslims. West African prince Abdul Rahman, freed by President John Quincy Adams in 1828 after 40 years in captivity, was only one of many African Muslims kidnapped and sold into servitude in the New World. In early America, Muslim names could be found in reports of runaway slaves as well as among rosters of soldiers in the Revolutionary War. Muslims fought to preserve American independence in the War of 1812 and for the Union in the Civil War.

Karoline P. Cook, Ph.D. did a thesis at Princeton University titled Forbidden crossings: Morisco emigration to Spanish America, 1492—1650.  Here is the abstract:

During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, emigration to Spanish America was restricted legally to old Christians, individuals who could prove they had been Catholic for at least three generations. Due to Spanish authorities’ preoccupations with spreading religious orthodoxy, Moriscos or Iberian Muslims, many of whom had been forcibly baptized at the beginning of the sixteenth century, were prohibited from settling in Spanish America. But these laws, like so many others during the period, were not fully enforced. Frequent royal decrees prohibiting Morisco emigration have led many historians to assume that no or very few Moriscos settled in Spanish America. However, the existence of a rich parallel historiography concerning Spanish and Portuguese conversos in the New World, who were subject to the same legislation as Moriscos, suggests that individuals evaded the restrictions by a variety of means and settled in the forbidden territories.
Through a careful analysis of colonial legislation, inquisitorial records and court cases I analyze how Morisco emigrants negotiated their status, religious practices and relationships in a transatlantic context. I examine the influence of the purity of blood statutes that permeated local conflicts over status and honor, the role of the Inquisition in enforcing religious orthodoxy and the jurisdictional difficulties inquisitors and local officials faced.

Following the lines drawn by colonial authorities, many historians of Spanish America have assumed that the idealized legal and social entities, the Republic of Spaniards and the Republic of Indians, remained separate. Recent studies show that Spaniards and indigenous peoples interacted on a daily level more than was previously acknowledged. They have also challenged the unified legal category “Indian,” by recognizing the diverse peoples who were designated by this label. My research questions the category of Spaniard in similarly rigorous ways, troubling its implication of an “old Christian” who possessed purity of blood and formed part of a unified Catholic society. I demonstrate that the presence of Moriscos and Muslims in the Spanish Americas, as well as the circulation of knowledge about them, complicates notions of what it meant to be a Spaniard and part of an early modern Spanish world.

The first Jew to be identified as such entering America was Joachim Gans in 1584. Some people would argue that the first Jew was Luis de Carabajal y Cueva, a Spanish conquistador and converso, who first set foot in what is now Texas in 1554. **

Estevan of Azamor (or Estevanico) may have been the first Muslim to enter the historical record in North America. Estevanico was a Berber originally from North Africa who explored the future states of Arizona and New Mexico for the Spanish Empire in the 1530’s. **

Read the rest…

A woman was harassed for being Muslim and sprayed with pepper spry by her attacker. Now the FBI is looking for help in the investigation. I guess Islamophobia i all made up?

FBI Issues Appeal For Help In ‘Hate Crime’ Investigation

COLUMBUS, Ohio –

The FBI has issued a more detailed description of a man who apparently sprayed a Muslim woman with a pepper spray and the public is being asked to help find him.

NBC4 first told you about this story Tuesday, after a veiled woman told police she had been sprayed with some kind of chemical by a man who came up to the driver’s side window in the parking lot of a mosque.  He yelled threatening remarks and drove off.

The FBI is asking the public if they know a white male, in his 40’s or 50’s, 5 feet 9 inches tall with a medium build.  His light colored, closed-cropped beard is coupled with a long mustache.

Authorities say his teeth are in poor condition, yellowish with several missing.  He has light-colored eyes.

The image of the vehicle he was driving was captured on surveillance video. It’s a white Jeep Cherokee from the late 80’s or early 90’s and has a roof rack and black wheels.

Anyone with information on the man or vehicle is asked to contact the FBI at 614-744-2144 or Crime Stoppers at 614-461-8477.

The woman did not suffer serious injury in the incident.

Fathima Rifqa Bary

Judge Daniel Dawson who has been presiding over the Fathima Rifqa Bary case in Florida has ruled that she should return home to Ohio where she will be staying with a foster family. No doubt the fanatical anti-Muslim bloggers and right-wing nuts will be labeling the judge a dhimmi for following the law. They tried their hardest to smear this family and Muslims with everything they could, including lies, today it finally seems that this case which should have been decided from the very beginning is finally drawing to a close.

Fathima Rifqa Bary is likely coming home to Ohio, the state she fled nearly three months ago, saying she feared death for her conversion to Christianity.

But she’ll be staying in a foster home, not her parents’ Northeast Side apartment.

Jurisdiction in the 17-year-old’s case should be transferred from Florida to Ohio, judges in both states decided via conference call yesterday.

Dependency cases were filed in both states to determine whether the girl should be returned to her parents, who she says would harm her for leaving Islam.

“I believe this is the home state and the most convenient forum with respect to the issues as I understand them,” said Franklin County Juvenile Judge Elizabeth Gill.

Judge Daniel P. Dawson of the 9th Judicial Circuit Court of Florida agreed, but he required certain steps be taken before she is returned.

Rifqa ran away in July, saying her father threatened to kill her for becoming a Christian. Mohamed Bary denied her accusations, and a Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigation found no credible threats to her safety.

She could be back in Ohio by Oct. 27, when a hearing is scheduled in Franklin County Juvenile Court, said Dawson, speaking from Orlando.

But before ordering her into the care of Franklin County Children Services, Dawson wanted two issues settled.

He asked for documented assurance that Rifqa’s online schooling can continue in Ohio. Dawson also asked that Rifqa’s parents provide all paperwork related to her immigration status before she crosses state lines.

The immigration status of Rifqa, a native of Sri Lanka, is unclear. Her guardian ad litem in Florida said she may not be in the United States legally.

It isn’t yet clear exactly when Rifqa will return, or how she will be transported. She will receive a psychological evaluation when she gets here.

Dawson asked whether the Barys could simply dismiss the Ohio dependency case because they filed it themselves in an attempt to transfer jurisdiction.

Assistant Franklin County Prosecutor Chris Julian said they would not agree to dismiss the case. A Children Services official added that it would not be in Rifqa’s or her family’s best interest for her to live at home at this time.

In Gill’s courtroom yesterday, Mohamed Bary and his wife, Aysha, sat calmly between their attorneys. They laughed when they heard Rifqa’s Florida attorney, John Stemberger, say that she was in danger of being sent back to Sri Lanka where she could be killed or institutionalized.

Stemberger also said Rifqa wants to stay in Florida.

After the hearing, the Barys and their 18-year-old son, Rilvan, said they were told not to comment. Rifqa’s Ohio attorney, Kort Gatterdam, cited a gag order in declining to comment.

Dawson expressed frustration during the hearing that the Barys had not provided Rifqa’s immigration paperwork after repeated requests.

He gave them 10 business days to comply, under threat of being found in contempt of court.

He also ordered the release of the 110-page transcript of a nearly three-hour interview with Rifqa that was conducted by Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigators. But some information must be redacted first, he said, not specifying an exact release date.

mheagney@dispatch.com

Pamela Geller, who has invested so much in this case, even making up lies whole cloth and trying to pass it on as “investigative journalism” is not pleased. In her usual shrill and radically bigoted style she writes that this is a “slow motion execution, shariah style.” Practically that the American system of law is Shariah. The woman is nuts. At the same time Robert Spencer takes his talking points from Pam and writes that “US court capitulates to shariah.” What fantasy land are they living in? My guess is when this case is over, as it soon will be, you will see Spencer distance himself from the case by remaining silent on it, or as per his practice declare victory.

Fathima Rifqa Bary

Mike Thomas is a journalist with the Orlando Sentinel which has been following and reporting on the Fathima Rifqa Bary case. The case of the young runaway has garnered much attention and many of the Islamophobes and anti-Muslims have much invested in it. Recently, conservative attorney John Stemberger who volunteered to represent Rifqa is now claiming that the real danger to the girl comes from the Mosque that her father attends.

Mike Thomas wanted to check if these sentiments were truly held by the neighbors of the Mosque or those who knew it, in a blog titled This is a Terrorist Mosque?, Thomas writes,

Attorney John Stemberger, who volunteered to represent Rifaq Bary, now claims that the real danger to the girl is her father’s mosque – the Noor Islamic Cultural Center - which he says is radical and has ties to terrorism.

I checked that with Rabbi Misha Zinkow, of Temple Israel, who spoke at the Noor center earlier this year at an inter-faith gathering.

“Their presence in the community is a positive one,” he said. “My interaction with the Muslim community has been very positive.”

I then asked the Rabbi if Columbus was a hotbed of Islamic extremism, another charge I frequently hear.

“I don’t think I would echo those sentiments,” he said.

The Noor Islamic Cultural Center also is a member of B.R.E.A.D., a social justice organization that includes a number of Protestant churches (Baptist, Methodist, Lutheran, etc) , Catholic churches, Episcopalian churches, Temples and even the Unitarians.

Earlier this month, the Center had an interfaith session on homeland security.

Here is a promo the Center put out on Youtube. You can see all those middle-aged, crazy terrorists flipping burgers and hot dogs on the grill.

Mike Thomas shows that this Mosque is far from the “terrorist Mosque” that it is being painted as by Rifqa’s attorney, but will it be enough for those who are using the Fathima Rifqa Bary case for their own agenda to stop their crusade to paint the Mosque as a haven for terrorism whose members will kill Rifqa if returned?

LoonWatchers might have noticed that the anti-Muslim blogsphere with the likes of Pamela Geller and Robert Spencer have been reporting on this case constantly and have invested a lot in it, pushing full throttle to see to it that Fathima R. Bary does not end up with her parents and instead stays in Florida. Just today Robert Spencer posted a blog requesting his supporters to contact (pressure) the Florida court to keep Rifqa there. For them it is a high stakes game in the war against Muslims, so if Fathima is returned to her parents and the courts find that her life  is not in threat they will end up with major egg on their faces.

Fathima Rifqa Bary

There is a great editorial in the Fairfield County Weekly that highlights some of the obfuscation and outright prejudice that has resulted from the Fathima Rifqa Bary case. The girl who ran away from her house in Ohio and joined a Christian pastor’s family in Florida and is now being held in foster care until a judge can ascertain whether or not she should be returned home. She has made serious allegations against her family that they will kill her if she is returned to them.

The article points out some logical fallacies that many in the right wing propaganda media have been perpetuating such as the one from loony blogger Pamela Geller who says that according to a secret “source” of hers, she knows that Fathima’s father has forced her to wear hijab. How does this jibe with the fact that her father also allowed her to be a cheerleader? Or the fact that there isn’t one picture of her on the internet when she is with family or not where she is wearing a hijab?

You Don’t Have to Act like a Refugee

Thursday, August 27, 2009

Comments (2),By FCW Editorial

Rifqa Bary says that if she’s sent back to Ohio her father Mohamed will kill her. The 17-year-old, whose family immigrated from Sri Lanka, says she converted to Christianity from Islam four years ago, having picked up the religion from friends at school where she’s an honors student and cheerleader. This led to four years of beatings from her father and brothers, according the right-wing blogs salivating over Rifqa’s story.

“Beatings were random, violent, unprovoked,” writes Pamela Geller, the “citizen journalist, citizen soldier” who runs the site Atlas Shrugs. “Take, for example, when Rifqa and her father Mohammad [sic] were driving in the car. He would force her to wear the hijab, which she hated. In her discomfort she would slouch down, embarrassed, and her father would haul off and sock her in the face so that she never forgot to sit up straight in her costume.” Finally, her father told her he’d kill her for shaming the family, the teen says.

So Rifqa met a husband-and-wife Christian ministry team on Facebook, ran away from home and rode a Greyhound to their doorstep. Luckily, they live in Florida, a state where no dispute can ever be handled quickly or sensibly. (Elián González, Terry Schiavo, the 2000 recount.) She is now in foster care and a Florida juvenile court is deciding whether or not to send her back to Ohio.

Newsmax, WorldNetDaily and other conservative news sources have dedicated a lot of bandwidth to this story. Faux News is the most reliable national news source to more than glimpse at it, and only the Columbus Dispatch and Orlando Sentinel are dealing out real information.

This may be why no one has realized this story is full of holes. (Most of these people haven’t even noticed the Book of Genesis is full of holes.)

Mohamed Bary, a jeweler, beats his daughter for being embarrassed at wearing a hijab but also lets her prance around in a cheerleading uniform before a crowd every Friday night? We’ve never even seen a picture of Rifqa Bary in a hijab; in the myriad pictures floating around the Internet, she’s in typical Gap-ish clothing. She also had very unrestricted Facebook access for someone living in tyranny. She says she was at the bottom of a family dogpile for four years, but neither school officials in Ohio or the DCF agents in Florida have found as much as a bruise. The chief of the Columbus police missing persons bureau said Mr. Bary “comes across to me a loving, caring, worried father about the whereabouts and the health of his daughter.”

Christian crusaders haven’t dug up any dirt on Mr. Bary. They note a radical cleric and members of a terrorist cell have passed through Columbus area mosques and that a similar “honor killing” happened in Dallas — in other words, They’re all the same! They cite not the Koran but interpretations of Islamic law saying Bary would have to kill his daughter. Good thing she is not coming back to a family of Christians; their holy book says rebellious teens should be stoned (Deut. 21:18-21).

Clearly, this is not about Mohamed Bary; it’s about Islam and continuing irrational prejudice against it.

Rifqa Bary may not be lying exactly — the repressed memory fad proved confused people can come to believe terrible things about their families — but her story only adds up if you assume all Muslim men are secretly savages sworn to kill the infidel.

This is how the rabid right operates. Disregarding evidence or common sense, they follow the story line that makes sense to them — be it that Democrats are overhauling health care to implement “death panels” or that an ethnically complicated liberal in the White House must be a Kenyan citizen at the heart of a Dan Brown–sized conspiracy.

Here’s where this kind of thinking (of lack thereof) can lead us: The law-abiding Bary family is worried, reunion or no, it may have to return to Sri Lanka because of all the negative attention. So because of right-wing paranoia, a family may actually leave the U.S. because of religious persecution.

I wonder if Pamela Geller or her friends Sheikyermami and Robert Spencer have an answer to this?

Andrew Bostom and "Islamic Scholar" Robert Spencer

The Right-Wing anti-Muslim loonocracy and its minions in the blogosphere have secured a new cause to rally around, ironically enough it once again involves a Muslim minor, and in this regard, the anti-Muslim blogosphere really doesn’t have a good track record.  As recent history has proved, the last time the anti-Muslim blogosphere got this riled up about Muslim minors they turned up with egg on their faces.

After viewing a picture online of a wedding in Gaza, with grooms holding the hands of their young female cousins and nieces, the Islamophobia hit epic proportions with accusations of pedophilia being flung about wily-nily without nary a fact check. Tim Marshall, who reported on the wedding wrote about the Islamophobic response to the wedding,

Our report on this put it into context saying that it took place just a mile from the Israeli border and was a message from Hamas about its strength confidence and future fighters. Oh and that the brides were elsewhere. Pretty straightforward.

It never struck me for a moment that the little girls might later be described in the bloggersphere as the brides! How naive I am.

Dozens, and I mean dozens, of websites took the video of the event and wrote lurid stories about Hamas mass paedophilia with headlines about ‘450 child brides’, and endless copy about how disgusting this was, how it showed how depraved Islam is, et al, ad infinitum. Site after site jumped on the story, linking from one totally wrong load of rubbish to the next.

Robert Spencer was amongst the bloggers that falsely reported the incident as an instance of pedophilia.

The Fatimah Rifqa Bary Case

This time the case involves 17 year old Fatimah Rifqa Bary the daughter of Sri Lankan immigrants who came to America in 2000 seeking treatment for her vision problems. And before you could say “expediency,” the typical hordes of vultures started cycling, not so much out of interest for the girl’s welfare or the facts of the story, but as what they saw as a golden opportunity to reaffirm their caricature of Islam and Muslims as a dangerous cancer lurking within an otherwise good and pure Western civilization.

Fatimah, a cheerleader at New Albany High School ran away from her Columbus, Ohio home and ended up at the home of a pastor in Florida named Blake Lorenz. The details on how she ended up in Florida are still murky but what is clear is that she is leveling some very serious allegations against her family, including that she will be killed if she is returned to Ohio. The Columbus Dispatch reports in a story titled Girl Brainwashed, Parents say:

With Lorenz holding his arm tightly around her, Rifqa told WFTV-TV in Florida on Monday that she would be killed if she came home.

“They love God more than me; they have to do this,” she said. “I’m fighting for my life. You guys don’t understand.”

The family disputes these allegations and believes their daughter has been brainwashed. They state quite categorically that she is free to practice whatever faith she wants,

“We love her, we want her back, she is free to practice her religion, whatever she believes in, that’s OK,” her father, Mohamed Bary, said yesterday.

“What these people are trying to do is not right — I don’t think any religion will teach to separate the kids from their parents,” he said.

The family is not the only ones questioning the young girls allegations, Sgt. Jerry Cupp, the Chief of the Columbus Police Missing-Persons Bureau has said that Mohamed Bary (the father) “comes across to me as a loving, caring, worried father about the whereabouts and the health of his daughter.”

Robert Spencer, however, without knowing anything about the family — or the complete facts of the case — believes there is a slow motion honor killing in the making.  Starting from the pre-set conclusion that he derives from his personal study of Islam, he states that Islam requires the death penalty for apostates, and that it is a dead letter only “if no one cares or is able to enforce it in a particular case.” He writes this in response to Muslim scholar M. Cherif Bassiouni, a distinguished Law professor at DePaul University and President of the International Human Rights Law Institute, who wrote in 2006 that “a Muslim’s conversion to Christianity is not a crime punishable by death under Islamic law.”

Professor Bassiouni wrote this in 2006 when a man in Afghanistan was under the penalty of death for converting to Christianity. He wrote it as part of a document that was submitted to the court in Kabul. It has also been professor Bassiouni’s opinion as early as 1983. Professor Bassiouni responded to Spencer stating,

My position on apostasy has been expressed as early as 1983, namely that at the time of the Prophet it was not considered as only changing one’s mind but that it was the equivalent of joining the enemy and thus constituting high treason. In fact, at one time the Prophet had an agreement with the people in Makkah to return to Makkah all those who came from there, who wished to return after they had converted to Islam. I and a number of other distinguished Muslim scholars have long criticized the views of the four traditional Sunni schools…It is amazing to me how apparently little good faith and intellectual honesty you are displaying in your attack upon Islam and Muslims.

Professor Bassiouni’s position is pretty straight forward, he disagrees with those Muslims and non-Muslims who believe Islam legislates death for apostates and that his and many other distinguished Muslim scholars’ opinion is that it doesn’t. This is not so hard to grasp as LoonWatch contributor Barbel notes directly addressing Spencer,

In an obvious attempt to categorically associate this situation with all Muslims you wrote:

If she is sent back to her family, she could be killed, in accord with the death penalty that is prescribed by all Muslim sects and schools for those who leave Islam.

Surely, as a “scholar” you must be aware of this verse from the Muslim holy book, the Quran:

Those who believe, then reject Faith, then believe (again) and (again) reject Faith, and go on increasing in Unbelief,- God will not forgive them nor guide them on the Way.

How would it be possible to reject faith twice or go on increasing in unbelief if one was suppose to have been killed after the first rejection?  Furthermore, what purpose would withholding guidance have if the person had a death sentence anyway?

Robert, regardless of what you might want us to believe, Islamic scholars are NOT in consensus nor have they ever been in consensus over the apostasy issue.  Historically, the sentence of death was only applied to people who converted from the religion AND committed espionage. Consider what the 10th century scholar Shams al-Din al-Sarakhsi had to say:

The prescribed penalties are generally not suspended because of repentance, especially when they are reported and become known to the head of state.  The punishment of highway robbery, for instance, is not suspended because of repentance; it is suspended only by the return of property to the owner prior to arrest. … Renunciation of the faith and conversion to disbelief is admittedly the greatest of offenses, yet it is a matter between man and his Creator, and its punishment is postponed to the day of judgment. Punishments that are enforced in this life are those which protect the people’s interests, such as just retaliation, which is designed to protect life.

More recently, the contemporary Islamic scholar Tariq Ramadan (a man you have repeatedly tried to defame) had this to say:

I have been criticized about this in many countries.  My view is the same as that of Sufyan Al-Thawri, an 8th-century scholar of Islam, who argued that the Koran does not prescribe death for someone because he or she is changing religion. Neither did the Prophet himself ever perform such an act. Many around the Prophet changed religions. But he never did anything against them.  There was an early Muslim, Ubaydallah ibn Jahsh, who went with the first emigrants from Mecca to Abyssinia.  He converted to Christianity and stayed, but remained close to Muslims.  He divorced his wife, but he was not killed.

I know this is probably still not enough for you, so here are over a hundred more Islamic scholars who are against the death penalty for apostasy.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that this girl (or many others who are in similar situations) isn’t at serious risk.  She very may well be.  All it means is that the straw man version of Islam that you have created only serves to ignite more hatred and promote your own personal ideological agenda.

This highlights the absurdity that is Robert Spencer, an absurdity that projects an ominous pre-set conclusion on any heated situation that arises dealing with Muslims and castigates “all Islam” in the process without acknowledging the polyvalent interpretations that exist or the context.

Robert Spencer’s Hypocrisy on Religious Freedom

What further makes the Fatimah Rifqah Bary case one which exposes Spencer and his cronies is the hypocrisy of it all. This is being painted as a freedom of religion case, specifically the freedom to change one’s religion, but it seems in this department Spencer sounds like the pot calling the kettle black since he supports those who would restrict the freedom of religion of Muslims.

As we have written on extensively before, one of the close comrades of Spencer is neo-fascist European politician Geert Wilders. Spencer is on the record stating his admiration for Wilders who he sees as the only European politician standing up for Western Civilization.

"Under his wing": Geert Wilders & Robert Spencer

Wilders is by all accounts an odious individual who calls for the out right denial of religious freedom to Muslims. He has called for the banning of the Quran which he compares to Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, he has also stated that, “Freedom of Religion should not apply to Islam.” He is also working to end Muslim immigration and strip Muslims in Dutch society of their citizenship.

This is Spencers friend. Spencer has also participated in forums with Wilders, conferences, writes articles about him, has interviewed him and cites him often. In one article Spencer wrote in response to CAIR‘s Ibrahim Hooper he says,

I didn’t actually have anything to do with that conference in Florida, but Hoop could just say straight out that I support Wilders. And so should anyone who holds dear the Western values that are threatened by Islamic supremacists.

So is the Fatimah Rifqah Bary case another instance of Robert Spencer jumping the gun or is her life legitimately under threat? The courts will resolve that question, but Spencer has shot his credibility in this department with a track record of obfuscation, innuendo and misrepresentation and is wholly unreliable.

Will Spencer also back track on his position that “all Muslim sects and schools of thought” legislates the death penalty for apostates and concede that there is a valid counter opinion such as the one articulated by Professor Bassiouni? Finally, will Spencer quit the charade that he is a democrat that cares for Freedom of Religion when in fact his position is to support those who would deny religious freedom?

It seems that per his practice, Spencer seized on this case to further his well-oiled agenda that Islam is evil and Muslims are backward. As the story of Fatimah Rifqah Bary plays out we will see more clearly that the anti-Muslims are not motivated by her welfare but rather to confirm their warped hatred of Islam and Muslims.