Rifqa Bary (center) with her mother Aysha, father Mohamed and 2 brothers in 2005. The family moved to the U.S. in 2000. (COURTESY OF BARY FAMILY / August 28, 2009)
COLUMBUS, Ohio - Mohamed Bary is a doting Muslim father, intent on giving his daughter the best education he can. But he says he made a terrible mistake last October: He bought her a laptop computer.
Because of that laptop and access to the Internet, he says he lost his daughter to Christian extremists.
Fathima Rifqa Bary, 17, is 800 miles away, living with a Christian foster family in the Orlando area. She is a runaway who has become a cause célèbre among evangelical Christians. She fled Ohio last month, saying her father had threatened to kill her because she had converted to Christianity.
Not true, Mohamed Bary said. "I still cannot believe she would think that," he said.
But somebody planted that idea in her head, and he is convinced it was someone she met on the Internet.
Facebook, an online social network in which users select "friends" from anywhere and everywhere, is where Rifqa met Blake and Beverly Lorenz, the Orlando husband-and-wife minister team who took her in after she ran away.
In the weeks before she fled, her parents noticed she would sleep all day and stay up all night exploring the Internet.
Until this spring, Rifqa was a model student, an obedient daughter. She earned good grades, worked part-time at a Chinese restaurant and called home even if she were running just 10 minutes late.
But about the time school ended in May, she began all-night Facebook sessions. She started withdrawing from family members and longtime friends, her parents said.
Many of her chats were with evangelical Christians, her father said. They turned her against him, he said.
Friends back family
People who know the Barys say Rifqa's allegations are crazy.
"There is no way this man would hurt his daughter," said Neil Javery, 52, a Hindu and family friend in Westerville, the Columbus suburb where the Barys live.
Mohamed Bary, 47, is a kind, gentle man who loves his daughter, takes great pride in Rifqa's school accomplishments.
He sells jewelry and Amway products, friends say.
Aysha Bary is a stay-at-home mom who speaks little English but breaks into tears over what has happened.
"My heart goes out to them," said Holly Easton of Plain City, Ohio, who owns a wedding gown business and pays Rifqa's mother to stitch beads onto gowns. "It's horrible. ... I hope they're able to reconcile, and she comes home and they can be a family again."
The Barys are not radical Muslims, friends and associates say. Their household is as normal as any other.
"It's just typical," Easton said. "Kid comes in, looks at parents, rolls her eyes and goes upstairs."
It became atypical on July 19. That's the day Rifqa, a popular high-school cheerleader, sneaked away and fled to Orlando on a Greyhound bus.
Two weeks later, the Florida Department of Children and Families placed her in a foster home. Her parents, through a pair of court-appointed attorneys, are fighting to have her returned to Ohio, where they've agreed to let her live with a foster family for at least 30 days.
John Stemberger, a conservative Christian activist and leader of the Florida Family Policy Council, has taken on Rifqa as a client and cause. He told Circuit Judge Daniel Dawson at an Aug. 21 hearing in Orlando that until she turns 18 next August, she wants to stay with her Florida foster family and be free to worship Jesus.
Rifqa told the judge she'd been a Christian for four years. Her parents learned of her conversion a year ago — and that she had kept her new faith a secret from them. She proclaimed herself a Christian on her Facebook page in 2007.
Away from home, though, Rifqa was open about her faith. She gathered with other students for "See you at the Pole," an annual prayer service held at schools around the country. Until about three months ago, she attended a youth group at the tiny Korean United Methodist Church in Columbus.
She carried a Bible to class. That upset her parents, who told her they were afraid — not that she had converted to another faith but that she'd get in trouble for violating the separation of church and state.
Her father said when he discovered her reading a Bible months ago, "We didn't go crazy and nuts."
He encouraged her to learn more about Islam, he said, and once she'd done that, she would be free to worship as she chose.
Her love for Jesus is heartfelt, he said, but he remains baffled at how that got twisted into her fear that he would kill her.
"It's so sad," he said. "After everything she has said about us, she's still our daughter, and we want her back."
Born in Sri Lanka
When Rifqa was born, her family was wealthy and lived in Galle, Sri Lanka. They owned a large house and enjoyed the benefits of a driver, a cook and a maid.
Rifqa was a tiny newborn, just 5 pounds, and very quiet, Aysha Bary said. When Rifqa was 5, she fell onto a toy airplane. It left her blind in the right eye.
Her father insisted she get medical care in the United States. He feared her care would mean a long separation from his wife and son, so he moved the family to Queens, N.Y., in 2000.
In 2004, he moved them to the Columbus area because of its excellent public schools.
By the time the Barys moved here, though, they were no longer wealthy. Two months after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Mohamed Bary was on a business trip, flying with a bag of gems, as he often did. This time, the airline ordered him to check the bag. It was lost. It contained nearly $400,000 worth of jewels, said David Leung, 48, of Worthington, Ohio, a close family friend. Financially, the family has not recovered, he said.
The Barys live in a small, two-bedroom apartment and own one car, an 11-year-old Honda station wagon that has 225,000 miles on it.
A week ago, Rifqa's parents and brothers, ages 5 and 18, climbed into that car and drove 16 hours to Orlando for a court hearing. They had hoped the judge would order Rifqa back to Ohio.
But by then thousands of people had seen Rifqa on YouTube, crying and saying that her father, because he is a Muslim, has no option but to kill her for abandoning Islam. Gov. Charlie Crist's office received hundreds of e-mails — much of it anti-Muslim — urging him block her return to Ohio.
He did not, but he sent his general counsel, Rob Wheeler, and DCF Secretary George Sheldon to the Aug. 21 hearing. While they sat watching, a DCF lawyer asked the judge to put off a decision on returning Rifqa to Ohio until Sept. 3. He did.
DCF also asked the judge to let the Florida Department of Law Enforcement investigate whether Rifqa's father and other Muslims in Columbus are a threat to her. The judge said yes to that, as well.
FDLE agents and child welfare workers inspected the family's home and questioned Rifqa's parents last week.
"I'm happy they came," her father said. "We have nothing to hide."
He and his wife are modern Muslims, he said. Now, during the holy month of Ramadan, a time of prayer, they eat nothing between sunrise and sunset. Until this year Rifqa fasted with them.
Their prayers this year, her father said, are that Rifqa will come back to them.
"We want our daughter back home," he said. "She can practice whatever religion she wants."
Rene Stutzman can be reached at rstutzman@orlandosentinel.com or 407-650-6394.
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