Rifqa Bary Meets Hamlet. Result: Alas or Huzzah? (UPDATE)

Kurt Vonnegut was fond of pointing out why Hamlet is considered a masterpiece. At no point in the play, he used to say, do we know whether Hamlet is about to be doomed or about to be saved. "The truth is," he once wrote, "we know so little about life, we don't really know what the good news is and what the bad news is."

That pretty much sums up what I have been able to garner about the chronicle of Rifqa Bary, the teenage convert to Christianity who ran away from her Muslim family and their mosque in Ohio because she feared death by murder, killing being the Islamic remedy for her apostasy in leaving Islam. At every public moment of her present life, that is, at every court hearing, she seems to be either at the point of being doomed or at the point of being saved. I can't tell whether the news she's just heard is good or bad.

Rifqa has had several court hearings in Florida, where each time she seemed on the verge of being sent back to her parents and mosque in Ohio (who might take her back to Sri Lanka where there is no hope of providing her with safety)--as soon as one or another bureaucratic jot or tittle was added to her ever-thickening court file. A meeting had to take place, a report had to be filed, a mediation must be attempted, a conversation between judges in Florida and Ohio had to occur, etc., etc.

At her latest hearing, held yesterday, Florida Judge Dawson ruled that Rifqa be sent back to Ohio , as soon as her Sri Lankan parents, Mohamed and Aysha Bary, present their immigration papers to him.

Aye, there's the rub.

In a scenario reminiscent of "dialog" issuing from the mouths of Iranian officials avoiding inspection of their nuclear facilities, in hearing after hearing, the lawyer representing Rifqa's parents (who want her back) has promised the Court copies of the documentation, not honored that promise, supplied a couple of copies of incomplete documentation, accused others of racism for asking for the documentation, complained about the onerous difficulty of obtaining access to a photocopy machine, promised copies of the documentation, not supplied these, railed against having to produce documentation, etc., etc., etc.

Rifqa's parents seem to live in an curiously unstructured world in which one day they are prosperous business owners, the next day all their assets have mysteriously disappeared and they are paupers whose lawyers must be paid by the state, yet (simultaneously) "money is no problem," provided that this serves their case and that American taxpayers keep paying Mohamed and Aysha's lawyers to spread paperwork (except immigration documentation) all over court systems in two states. A mental projection that has worked well for them, thus far. American taxpayers keep paying for their legal representation, and they haven't even needed to show a green card.

Until now.

So is Rifqa doomed or is she saved?

Or, to put it another way, will Rifqa turn 18 before her parents find their immigration papers?

To learn more (much more) about Rifqa's struggle, read Pamela Geller's research at Atlas Shrugs. To view Rifqa's situation through the eyes of another Muslim apostate woman from Sri Lanka, listen to this moving interview by Pamela Geller: Download apostate.mp3 (5520.9K).
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Update 1:

ATLAS EXCLUSIVE BREAKING Mohamed Bary's Missing Immigration Documents: Status ILLEGAL

Update 2:

Recommended reading: Wax Lips pertinently wonders what happened to Hillary Clinton and the rest of the Children's Defense Fund.
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