First there was Elian Gonzalez, the Cuban boy torn between two nations. Then there was Terri Schiavo, the brain-damaged woman torn between two families. Now comes Rifqa Bary, the teenage runaway torn between two faiths.
If you’re involved in a high-stakes custody fight, Florida, it seems, is the place to be.
Could Rifqa’s father in Ohio really kill her for leaving Islam to embrace Christianity? Has the 17-year-old read too many fundamentalist Christian Web sites? Or is it all just teen dramatics?
Those are the questions swirling around the 17-year-old Ohio girl who became a Christian several years ago and sought shelter with an Orlando pastor after she feared for her life because, as she said, her father is bound by his Islamic faith to kill her.
One of the problems here is not so much that this child’s father may kill her, for Ohio authorities may have some control over that, but that he may take her back to Sri Lanka, where the Muslim authorities there may very well kill her for him. And neither Ohio, Florida or the US will have any control over that.