Aqsa, Amina, Sarah, Rand . . .

The four pretty teenagers pictured above, ages 16 to 18, all were victims of so-called "honor killings" committed by their fathers. In two of the murders, the fathers were assisted by another family member. In the other two murders, another family member blamed the girls for their own deaths.

Above, from left to right: Aqsa Parvez, strangled to death in Ontario for refusing to wear a veil to school; Amina and Sarah Said, shot to death in Texas on suspicion of dating non-Muslims; Rand Abdel-Qader, strangled and stabbed to death in Iraq for talking to a British soldier.

In a recent interview at FrontPage, Pamela Geller, the founder, editor, and publisher of AtlasShrugs.com, discussed the sensational case of another Muslim teenager, Rifqa Bary, 17 years old, who fled on a bus from Ohio to Florida to apply for Court protection from honor killing. Rifqa's offense: converting to Christianity.

Rifqa Bary, who recently turned seventeen, converted to Christianity from Islam – bringing upon herself Islam’s death sentence for those who leave Islam. When she was questioned by a news reporter, she spoke with the voice of every girl murdered in the name of Islamic "honor" [video here]. You could hear Amina and Sarah, Aqsa and Rand. The bitter cries that no one heard. Rifqa pleads for herself but she cries for all Muslim girls who are oppressed and subjugated.

[snip]

“You guys don’t understand,” Rifqa said. “Islam is very different than you guys think. They have to kill me. My blood is now halal, which means that because I am now a Christian, I’m from a Muslim background, it’s an honor. If they love God more than me, they have to do this."

[snip]

This is the front line – right in Florida. While our finest young Americans engage in hard fought battles on the front lines of the global jihad in Iraq and Afghanistan and Israel is on the front lines of the global jihad in the Middle East, Muslim women all over the world are on the front lines in the war against Islamic jihad. The battlefield is their homes. They live their lives in abject terror in homemade concentration camps.

Rifqa Bary’s life hangs in the balance. The West should do everything in its power to save her.

[snip]

When Muslim girls like Rifqa Bary, the most courageous girl in America, see what happened to Amina and Sarah Said, Aqsa Parvez, and so many others, they're forced to live out their sentence in their homemade concentration camps, because they see that there is no escape. If the West will not stand up for its values, its own unalienable rights, then these girls have no chance.

Do you have any idea how many Muslim girls are watching, and watching very closely, the case of Rifqa Bary? She represents their hope of freedom. That's why the Islamists want to kill her. If she succeeds, she will give other Muslim girls hope. That is why we must do everything we can to support her and other Muslim girls in danger of honor killing, by building shelters, creating an underground railroad, and supporting their attempts to be free.

Rifqa Bary goes before a Florida judge this coming Thursday, September 3. She is praying that the judge does not return her to her Sri Lankan parents, who have been living and doing business in Ohio but have now made preparations to leave the country.

Rifqa is not alone in fearing death for converting to Christianity. As I write this post, Maryam and Marzieh, two young Iranian women, are languishing in an Iranian jail, facing the death sentence for converting from Islam to Christianity.

An email to the Governor of Florida in support of Rifqa can help: Charlie.Crist@MyFlorida.com

Governor Crist can also be reached by phone at (850) 488-7146 or by fax at (850) 487-0801.

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Related Posts:

• Meditation: Will Florida Protect the Lives and Speech of Christians?
  
• Meditation: Maryam and Marzieh Face Death But Refuse to Renounce Christianity
• Meditation: Pray for the Release of Maryam and Marzieh
• Maryam and Marzieh: Convicted of Being Christian