How teen convert Rifqa Bary fled is probed; Saturday, February 20, 2010 2:56 AM, By Andrew Welsh-Huggins, Associated Press. Police probe into Ohio Minister Brian Williams and how teenage Ohio convert Rifqa Bary fled to Fla.
Former Muslim Rifqa Bary, who felt unsafe in her Columbus home, ran away to Florida in July.
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A minister accused of driving a teenage runaway to a Columbus bus station last year has retained a lawyer as police say they’re investigating whether anyone broke the law in helping the Christian convert leave her Northeast Side home for Florida.
The Ohio minister Brian M. Williams, is being represented by Michigan lawyer Keith Corbett, the lawyer said yesterday. “We’re representing Mr. Williams in the event he’s contacted by police authorities ... and asked to provide information,” Corbett said. The Columbus Police Department is investigating “any criminal wrongdoing with anyone involved in getting her from one location to another (Brian M. Williams),”
Sgt. Rich Weiner said yesterday.The case has become a rallying point for Christian activists who say that Bary, a 17-year-old who comes from a Muslim family, is a victim of intolerance, and for Muslims who say the girl was exploited by outsiders. Scores of demonstrators siding with the girl rallied outside the Franklin County Courthouse in November, 2009. Bary disappeared from her home in July and was discovered in Orlando, Fla., a few weeks later living with a minister and his wife, whom she had met on Facebook.
Meanwhile in Columbus whenthe police were trying to find Bary. Her cell phone was off, so they couldn’t track her signal — but her dad paid her bill, so he had access to her call log. He gave it to police.
That led to a name: Brian M. Williams. He’s a 2008 Ohio State grad, an aspiring pastor, and was a Facebook friend of Bary and Blake Lorenz. He moved recently from Columbus to Kansas City, Mo., where he was interning at the International House of Prayer, a giant facility in a renovated strip center that the people there call the “missions base” of “a global worship movement.”
Columbus police contacted Kansas City police. Kansas City police went to Brian M. Williams address. Columbus police talked to Williams on the phone. Josh McKoy, 20, a Metro State college student in Denver, met Bary through his friend Brian M. Williams and messaged with her on Facebook.
“Brian’s known her for a long time,” McKoy said over the phone. “I don’t know how they met but he was a huge help to her. Brian had bought her a Christian book. “Oftentimes,” McKoy said, “he was her transport to church and things like that.” Did Williams have something to do with her bus trip? Did Bary buy her ticket to Orlando? “We can’t confirm that,” Columbus police Detective Jerry Cupp said.
Intelligence Report, Fall 2008, Issue Number: 131
‘Arming’ for Armageddon
“JOEL’S ARMY” LAKELAND, Fla. — Todd Bentley (above) has a long night ahead of him, resurrecting the dead, healing the blind, and exploding cancerous tumors. Since April 3, the 32-year-old, heavily tattooed, body-pierced, shaved-head Canadian preacher has been leading a continuous “supernatural healing revival” in central Florida. Joel’s Army followers, many of them teenagers and young adults who believe they’re members of the final generation to come of age before the end of the world, are breaking away in droves from mainline Pentecostal churches.
Numbering in the tens of thousands, they base their beliefs on an esoteric reading of the second chapter of the Old Testament Book of Joel, in which an avenging swarm of locusts attacks Israel. In their view, the locusts are a metaphor for Joel’s Army.
“The pitch and intensity of the military rhetoric of this branch of the global Dominionist movement has substantially increased since the beginning of 2008,” writes The Discernment Research Group, a Christian watchdog group that tracks what they call heresies or cults within Christianity. “One can only wonder how long before this transforms into real warfare with actual warriors.
“‘Snorting Religion’
Joel’s Army believers are hard-core Christian dominionists, meaning they believe that America, along with the rest of the world, should be governed by conservative Christians and a conservative Christian interpretation of biblical law. There is no room in their doctrine for democracy or pluralism. Bentley’s “Florida Outpouring” had been running for more than 100 days straight.
Many attendees came in search of spontaneous physical healing and a desire to be part of a mystical community marked by dancing, shouting, gyrating, speaking in tongues and other forms of ecstatic release.Snide jabs at traditional church services are fairly common at Bentley’s revivals. In fact, what takes place onstage at the Florida Outpouring looks more like a pro wrestling extravaganza than church. On stage, Bentley and his team of pastors, yell, chant, and scream “Fire!” and “Bam!” while anointing followers.
“The Call,” a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 young people held in a different city each year, is led by Joel’s Army pastor Lou Engle. |
The audience members behave as if they are at a psychedelic counterculture festival. One couple jumps up and down twirling red and silver metallic flags. Dyed-haired teenagers pulled in by the revival’s presence on Facebook (Rifqa Bary) and MySpace wander around looking dazed.
Women lay facedown on the floor, convulsing and howling. Fathers wail in tongues as their confused children look on. Strangers lay hands on those who fail to produce tongues or gyrate wildly enough, pressuring them to “let it out.
“The atmosphere is less charged with violence at “The Call,” a 12-hour revival of up to 20,000 youths led by Joel’s Army pastor Lou Engle (his photo above in center) and held every summer in a major American city (this year’s event was scheduled for Washington, D.C. in August).
Attendees are called upon to fast and pray for 40 days and take up culture-war pledges to lead abstinent lives, reject pornography and fight abortion. They’re further asked to perform “identificational repentance,” lugging along family trees and genealogies to see where one of their ancestors may have enslaved or oppressed another so that they can make amends. (Many in the Joel’s Army movement believe in generational curses that must be broken by the current generation).
Fathima Rifqa Bary, has claimed that her parents are “radical Muslims,” yet the reality seems to be that it is actually she herself who has fallen into the ranks of radicals. We’re already very familiar with the extremist church she is involved with, the Global Revolution Church, which preaches that there is today an Armageddon between good (the Christians) and evil (the Muslims).Now, let’s look into a different group she has associated herself with, namely The Call, another End of Times Armageddon invoking group.
When Lou Engle is not overseeing right-wing “prayercasts“ and rubbing elbows with Republican members of Congress, he is affiliated with the International House of Prayer (IHOP) in Kansas City, which is essentially a 24/7/365 version of one of his The Call prayer rallies. A few weeks ago wrote about the fact that IHOP had canceled classes for several days because the Holy Spirit had descended on the campus and thousands of people were experiencing miraculous healings and spiritual re-awakenings.
Now CBN has produced this Video (click here) segment on the Holy Spirit outpouring in question.
One of the questions regarding the whole Rifqa Bary saga that has been lingering is how exactly she ever ended up becoming involved with Lou Engle and appearing on the prayer call he organized.
As it turns out, Bary had been involved with Engle’s efforts back in Ohio before she even ran away to Orlando Fl, though her connection to Brian M. Williams, who not only baptized her but also drove her to the bus station when she ran away.
As Bary explained during her interview with the Florida Department of Law Enforcement [PDF], she had met Williams through her activism with Engle’s “Bound for Life” in Ohio. Eventually, Brian M. Williams moved to Kansas City to go to work for Engle’s International House of Prayer.
Below is a shortened version of the exchange during the FDLE interview in which Bary explains her ties to Williams and to Engle’s right wing activism ["DL" is Daivd Lee, an FDLE agent and "FB" is Rifqa Bary]:
DL: Who baptized you?
FB: Brian Williams.
DL: Was he your minister?
FB: Yeah, basically. Yeah, well he’s a good friend, Ohio State friend and is basically going into ministry …
DL: Ohio State friend, so he’s a student at Ohio State?
FB: Um, graduated already
.DL: Okay.
FB: Lives in Kansas City now, but yeah he was the one that baptized me …
FB: I know how I even met Brian? It was through, it was last winter, we met. I heard about I’m Pro Life, you know.
DL: Okay.
FB: And um there was something called, he did a chapter leader for Columbus for Bound for Life. Have you guys ever heard of it?
DL: Bound for Life? No, I haven’t
FB: Bound for Life is basically through an organization by Lou Engle, who started The Call, if you guys know of Lou Engle.
DL: I’ve heard the name.
FB: Lou Engle, yes he’s like my hero. He really is and basically we do is, there’s red tape and you write “life” on it in black letters and we just stand outside with it and pray. It’s not a protesting, it’s a prayer movement if anything.
DL: Um-hum.
FB: And we just stand outside in a circle, outside these clinics, we don’t say anything to anyone, you know we’re not allowed to talk to them, we just pray outside there.
DL: Um-hum.
FB: And he was a chapter leader there so I met him there and actually I was sneaking out to go hear that I even met him. And every time I talked to him all we did talk about was like my parents. And he was really afraid for me as well …
DL: And you said Brian was the only one who was willing to really baptize you?
FB: Yeah, ’cause I mean if my parents found out they would get in trouble and their would be at stake and all that sort of thing.
DL: You say he’s in Kansas City now?
FB: Kansas City. International House of Prayer. IHOP.
