http://www.onenewsnow.com/Culture/Default.aspx?id=1024924A former Muslim who was pastor of a church in Columbus, Ohio, says 17-year-old Christian convert Rifqa Bary has told him she has a very aggressive form of uterine cancer.
Jamal JivanjeeJamal Jivanjee is currently the director of Florida-based ministry illuminate. But while pastoring in Ohio, he was contacted by Rifqa Bary, whom he later met at a coffee shop. Since that time he has become a major confidant of the teenager, who remains in foster care in Ohio while her well-publicized custody dispute with her parents continues.
Bary fled from her parents' home last summer in fear that her father would harm or even kill her for converting to Christianity.
Jivanjee says now the young girl has told him the very disturbing news that she has been diagnosed with uterine cancer.
Rifqa Bary 2"They've already told her that it's a pretty aggressive form of uterine cancer, but they'll know more after Thursday," the pastor shares. "I think its going to be exploratory surgery there. Then...they expect, as soon as she is able, [that she will] undergo some aggressive chemotherapy as well."
According to Jivanjee, Bary's estranged Muslim parents were allowed to come into her hospital room.
"I don't know if it was her attorney, her case worker, [but] somebody made the decision to bring her parents into the room to see her without her permission," he says. "And that caused her a lot of emotional turmoil and stress, and she objected to that and they had to get them out of there."
Jivanjee says with Bary's immigration status still up in the air, and the prospect of extensive medical treatment, she is obviously scared right now.