There is another side to this issue which you all have rightly pointed out. How are we to live with Islamic law? The truth is we cannot, except in very narrow circumstances. In this country, at least so far, we do not suffer anyone to be murdered, even by their parents, for professing a belief. As long as they can handle that part of being in America, all will be well. But people, wake up! No matter how much we wish it weren’t so, Islam sees every one of us as fodder for either conversion or death, with nothing else being acceptable to it. Like it or not, Islam cannot and will not co-exist with any other religion if they have any sort of choice about it. To say anything else is so is to tell the world’s second biggest lie, and to cling to it is infantile in the extreme. What is the prize holder for first place? I believe it was the one Satan told when he convinced modern man he didn’t exist.
Pray for us all.

with all due respect, I have 5 teen-agers and I respect their opinions as thoughts coming from authentic belief. Would one say that many of the saints, ranging from the Blessed Mother to St Therese of the Child Jesus were rebelling? I find your analysis of teen behavior insulting and untrue.

Rifqa was not brainwashed by anybody and has been secretly practicing her Christian faith for several years. Nobody abused her freedom or evangelized her in a concerted effort. She learned about Christianity in a natural way. My understanding is that her impetus for running away was that she had been discovered; and, that her parents were pressuring her to stop being a Christian.

She is 17 years old now and, I would dare say, is considered an adult in most Islamic cultures. She should be emancipated and allowed to live in the peace of Christ, and not on the run as if under the order of a Fatwah. (like Salmon Rushdie)

I’m a volunteer in Catholic prison ministry at a juvenille correctional facility and the chaplin in charge of our facility does not allow the different religions to “evangelize” these under age girls for this very reason. They are not adults yet and the parents do not want other religions influencing their children while they are in our facility and to me, that is totally understandable.

How would we like it if the muslims tried to convert our children? I know our Catholic girls are constantly being “evangelized” by the Protestants in the facility we volunteer at, too. The protestants have said all kinds of negative things about the Catholic church to these girls, in order to get them to turn from their faith and convert to “christianity” because Catholics aren’t really christians. The girls are constantly being bombarded with attacks on their Catholic beliefs and so we have a lot of classes and discussions about our religion with them to help them cope with these questions that the protestants have about the Catholic church. But, by the same token, there are protestant girls who are very curious about the Catholic church but aren’t allowed to come to our classes because their parents do not have a say about it, and I can certainly respect that as well.

Parents have a right to be there to discuss their religion with their children, especially when their children are being “evangelized” by forces outside of the family. However misguided they are, families should have the right to discuss and debate these issues for themselves. Then, when the child is an adult, they should be free to make their own decisions.

Rifqa Bary should be kept under supervision to protect her life, but her parents should also be allowed to finish raising their own daughter.

We are supposed to treat others the way that we would want to be treated and we do not want the muslim people “evangelizing” our children either, do we?

Mutual respect can go a long way toward opening closed doors. I think Jesus tried to teach us that as well.

I don’t know what all that can mean, but it doesn’t sound good for either our enemies or us. Part of what we learn, as giving us challenge and opportunity by this young woman’s awful problems, must be how we will deal with this as at once a free people, and a tolerant people.

I for one can see accepting martyrdom for my Catholic faith, but those lives of every Christian in our culture? And, just what, if we die or submit in droves and populations, and that enemy claims his ‘victory for Allah’ – hardly having been ‘seeded for Christ’ by the blood of modern martyrs – will we have accomplished?

I can see this needing piles of our prayers: and, one can wonder less and less how Saint Paul called for our unceasing prayer lives. However, what other preparations and processes must we be ready to perform? For foreboding instance, what responses in our words and actions will we make about, perhaps, a Catholic church at best-attended Mass being held for hostage by jihadist Muslims, or some taking of our children gathered in school as, say, as at Beslan in Russia? It would be very head-burying in the ‘9/10’ manner to just say “It won’t happen”.