Finishing what I started yesterday. From my Examiner column.

Rifqa Bary’s faith in the face of suffering

Jamal Jivanjee is the executive director of a ministry named illuminate. He is also Rifqa Bary’s friend. Picking up from our conversation with him yesterday:

Although Jivanjee is a minister, his voice glows when he speaks of how in many ways Rifqa’s testimony and witness have been a ministry to him. “She’s one of the strongest believers I’ve ever met. Not in the typical way of passion and emotion, although they’re both there. There’s a depth of relationship I don’t believe I’ve ever seen in anyone else.”

Jivanjee notes it’s hard to describe the intensity of Rifqa’s faith in mere words. However, he’ll give it a go. “Her knowledge of God; her ability to minister to and love people isn’t typical for anyone, at least in my experience. Certainly not typical for a teenage girl! But when you meet her, you forget — and this isn’t just me talking; it’s what everyone who meets her says — you forget she’s a sixteen, now seventeen year old girl. Again, it’s because of her ability to focus on, minister to and love people.

“It’s not a facade. She’s someone full of the Spirit of God. Every time I’ve met with her, I’ve left feeling like I’ve just spent a few minutes with Jesus. It’s that powerful an impact. Everyone who knows her says the same thing. She’s still a teenage girl. But as far as a person and their relationship with God, I’ve never met anyone like her.” This from a man who has done much traveling at home and abroad in his ministry.

Jivanjee touches on this as he continues. “I’ve seen something similar when I’ve been to the Middle East and met people who have come from a Muslim background, are now Christians and as a result have suffered tremendously. When you meet someone who has suffered a lot, along with a depth of relationship with and passion for God there’s a quiet peace and love present with them you don’t see apart from those who know suffering. There’s a prayer in Philippians that Paul wrote when he was at the end of his life. After all he went through, he wrote, ‘I want to know God; the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings.’ There’s a communion of fellowship with God that comes only through suffering. Rifqa has that.”

At the end of John’s gospel he comments that if everything Jesus did during His earthly ministry was written down the whole world wouldn’t have enough room for the books needed to contain it all. Although in her young life Rifqa hasn’t compiled quite such a lengthy resume, Jivanjee shares a few of the numerous accounts of her faith in action. “During the summers before she fled, she worked at a restaurant in town. One day, a couple of customers were having a conversation. One of the two men told the other he had been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Rifqa happened to hear what he was saying and was moved with compassion. She went over to him and said, ‘I’m not supposed to be sharing with people and talking about God on the job. But I heard what you said about having Parkinson’s, and I want to know if it’s all right for me to pray for you.’ So she did. When the man went back to his doctor, he was found to be free from the disease.”

Miraculous? Yes. But not singular. Jivanjee continues, “That’s normal for Rifqa. She’s prayed for people and they’ve been healed. She’s gone out sharing with people when she could get out and be with friends doing so, been walking down the street, seen someone, and been moved to share with them. And do so with supernatural ability. One time she ran across someone she’d never met before and told him his life story based on nothing other than the insight God gave her. She started describing some terrible things that had happened to him in his life, and he freaked out. ‘How in the world do you know these things?’ Rifqa replied that Jesus loved him and told him this was how she knew; through Him. That’s the kind of life Rifqa lives.”

One would think after all she’s been through and is now going through Rifqa would, should she come out alive, be inclined to take a breather. Wrong. Jivanjee points out in conversations he’s had with her how often she’s expressed a desire to work in the missions field overseas, particularly in the Muslim world and China.

So why, in Jivanjee’s view, is this all happening to Rifqa? “There’s a reason. For one, it’s getting her story out. Also, this is telling the world what other Muslims go through. It’s a scary proposition, because I and a lot of other people know the threat she’s faced. It’s real. She’s in the fight of her life. But I believe at the end of the day she’ll be protected. Not that I have faith in the legal system. I believe God will work it out.”

I had the privilege of speaking with Jamal Jivanjee earlier this evening. Here’s the first part of our conversation, as reported in my most recent entry for the Examiner.

Jamal Jivanjee expresses frustration over isolation of Rifqa Bary from fellow Christians

Jamal Jivanjee is the executive director of illuminate, a ministry devoted to bringing together believers in different churches across America for the purpose of creating a culture of rededication to the church as a vibrant, unified body of believers reflecting God’s glory.

He’s also Rifqa Bary’s friend.

In conversation earlier this evening, Jivanjee expressed concern over his personal inability to communicate with Rifqa since her return to Ohio and the overall isolation to which she has been subjected. “That’s been the frustration. I’ve been trying to get in contact with her through the proper channels. This has been going on since November. I was told that she had requested a visit from me, but I’d have to go through a process where it would be approved by Franklin County Children’s Services. Her attorneys told me who to contact, so I did. No one got back to me. I spent literally five hours on the phone one day trying to get a live person to talk to rather than just leaving voice messages. Finally someone from Children’s Services got back to me, saying they were putting together an approved visitor’s list. Rifqa would request certain people be able to visit, her attorneys would compile the list and give it to Children’s Services, and they would have to approve it. That hasn’t happened yet, and here we are in January.”

Does Jivanjee believe this to be a deliberate obstruction, or simple bureaucratic incompetence? “I believe it’s deliberate. When she was in Florida, I had no problem visiting her. The judge there said it was up to the foster family whether someone could visit. If the child was old enough to request a visit — remember she had just turned seventeen — and there’s no criminal intent on anyone’s part, it was fine. However, since she’s come back to Ohio the treatment has been very different.”

He notes, “From the beginning, her parents and their CAIR-appointed attorney have had a strategy to cut her off from any Christian influence. They mistakenly believe that influence is making her do what she’s doing. They’re also attempting to discourage her.”

Jivanjee emphatically states this isn’t about him. “Whether I get to visit her or not isn’t important. What is important is that she be allowed to have visitors she wants to see. A Christian, even one as strong in their faith as Rifqa, needs to have contact with other Christians. It’s a basic element; something that is very important to their emotional and spiritual well-being. Rifqa has gone through so much in the past few months. It’s abusive to cut her off.

“When I asked about it again a couple of weeks ago, after everything I had been told about an approved list I was now being given an entirely different answer. They said foster children were not entitled to have visitor’s lists or contacts lists. Rifqa had one person that had been approved to talk to her on the phone — it was a girl that she knew before she fled; a college student that had mentored her — and now that communication has stopped. The foster family she’s with has restricted her use of the phone. She’s cut off from any approved contact, and now I’m being told they don’t have to put together a visitor’s list and if I want to get angry about it I should be angry at the foster care system because that’s the way it is everywhere and Rifqa’s not being treated differently than any other child. Which is clearly not the case.”

Jivanjee adds, “Anybody that Rifqa would not want to talk to, like her parents or people from the Muslim community, the court seems to have no problem letting them talk to her. But people that she wants to talk to are forbidden. It makes no sense to me.”

Tomorrow: Jamal Jivanjee on Rifqa Bary the person.