The new Zionist American organization Z Street, founded only two months ago, has come out in defense of a Christian girl who is afraid her Muslim father will kill her.
Z Street says it “stands behind” 17-year-old Rifqa Bary, who ran away from her family so she could practice her chosen religion, Christianity, without fear of her father killing her for having abandoned Islam.
The new organization, founded by Lori Lowenthal Marcus of Philadelphia and Allison Rowen Taylor of Los Angeles, says it is committed to opposing terrorism and oppressive Muslim law.
“The media isn’t interested when Muslim parents make credible death threats against their teenage convert to Christianity,” Z Street announced, “but they ‘religiously’ condemn prayer in school and other non-Muslim religious expressions.”
This Thursday, September 3, a Florida Circuit Court is to decide whether the girl can remain in Florida, or must return to her parents, where she says she will be certainly be killed. “You don’t understand,” she is seen sobbing in a video circulated over the internet. “They have to kill me; it’s an honor thing. If they love Allah, more than me, they have to kill me… I am the first person in my family in 150 generations who has come to know Jesus; can you imagine what an ‘honor’ it would be for them to kill me? … It’s written in the Koran; if I go back, I would be dead within a week. There are hundreds of such cases; I’m only one of them.”
Rifqa says she wishes to remain a member of the non-denominational Global Revolution Church, headed by husband and wife pastors Blake and Beverly Lorenz, in Orlando, Florida. The girl became connected to the church via a Facebook prayer group.
Her father says it is not true that he would kill his daughter. He said that his is a “modern Muslim family” that follows Islamic law, but that if his daughter would return home, she would be free to practice any religion she wants.
Honor killings among Muslims in Western countries are on the rise. In Great Britain, for instance, it has been reported that there is an average of one a month.
Z Street’s 14-point charter states that it is “an organization of Zionists who join together at this time of great danger to the Jewish State of Israel and, increasingly, to world Jewry.” It maintains that Jews “have the right to live anywhere in the world, including, and especially, within greater Israel,” and “firmly believes that there can be no compromises or agreements with, and no concessions to, any Terrorist Entity or any individual Terrorists.” It is dedicated to “constantly and consistently declaring and affirming the facts that reveal the fallacious narratives of Terrorist Entities, Terrorists, and their supporters undermining the legal, moral and historical right of the Jewish State to exist in peace and security without physical or verbal assault against its sovereignty or legitimacy.”
The charter further states that Z Street “recognizes the value of other Zionist organizations” and is not intended to supersede them, but will rather “serve as an alternative to many mainstream and other Jewish organizations that, to meet donors’ requirements or for ideological reasons, cannot affirm [these] principles… Z Street has no need to, and will not negotiate with, nor seek to gain the approval from, any governments, Israeli or Diaspora organizations, or individuals supporting the diminution or weakening of Israel either because of ideological conviction, animosity towards a strong, Jewish State, cowardice, or the misguided belief that compromise with Terrorist Entities can lead to peace in the Middle East or global peace.”