Our Sister In Heaven- A memorial

[Ciara]

On a Christian forum a person posted the following and I wanted to share it with you all.

Our Sister In Heaven- A memorial

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Dedicated to Amal who on April 14th 2009 was forced on a plane by her brother and stoned by her family shortly after arrival in her homeland. Someone here tried to contact the Syrian Embassy, but as she was now an infidel and thought of less than a human they said that her father could do whatever he wanted with her.
Amal was from Syria, but lived in Ohio for school. Two Weeks ago today (April 15, 2009) Christ found her and she welcomed him with open arms and an open door. When her family found out after seeing a picture of her without her headcovering her brother flew over here to see what was going on and beat her up very badly. Then took away all forms of communication she had. After his brutal attack he forced her on a plane and told her she could serve Muhmmad (a dead man) or Jesus Christ (living in heaven on Gods right hand) but if she chose Jesus she would die. Well, she would not deny him and shortly after landing Amal was stoned, martyred by her family.
I urge you sisters and brothers not to allow her memory here on Earth to die. She is forgotten over there, but in the kingdom of God she will not be forgotten we must not allow it. Pass her story on. The story of a brave 19 year old who knew Jesus for 2 weeks, but loved him so much she wouldn't deny him even though the stones were already in her family's hands and she knew what was going to happen.
Pray for the salvation of her family through her death and the safety of her sister, who emailed Amal's friends letting them know what happened. If you knew Amal leave a memory, a picture even of her. Jesus is better than life, somehow in the short relationship with our Saviour Amal knew that very quickly.
I did not know her, but my friend did and she will live on in my heart because she was here near where I live and made an impact to those around me, forcibly making an impact on near friends and thus me.
Never forget our sister Amal. Her family would probably want her forgotten, but I will not allow that to happen. That is why I am publishing this story, her story, here. Copy and Paste it, put it in your notes too! Email it even!

Amal, you are in our Saviours arms and you are wearing that gorgeous crown for being martyred, you have no fear, no tears, only love. I respect you Amal, our brave and beautiful Syrian sister.

You can copy and paste this and even add your own notes to the end before sending it out!

 

[Vic C.]

This sort of extremism really irks me! 2

Thanks for sharing, Ciara.

 

[Guest]

Do we have independent verification of this story? Or has Madalyn Murray O'Hair come back from her grave to petition the FCC again?

 

[Gabe]

I'm not sure if that story is genuine, but this sort of behaviour is not un-common among Muslims in the East and (to a lesser degree) in the West. It needs to be stopped. Have a read through these news articles I have helped collect, they will make you sick:

Modern-day persecution of non-Muslims

Modern-day persecution of ex-Muslims

 

[destiny]

There is a site called Voice of The Martyrs... http://www.persecution.com

You can join their elist and they will send you updates of Christian persecution from all over the world. You won't hear of this from the secular media.

 

[Ciara]

I must apologize everyone, the above appears to be a hoax.

 

[Guest]

I must apologize everyone, the above appears to be a hoax.

Is it a hoax? How do we know it's a hoax?

 

[Vic C.]

I must apologize everyone, the above appears to be a hoax.

Thanks. I do think Gabe's point is very valid though.

 

[friend]

Christ provides a way out from those that want to destroy us. She was provided a way out according to God's love. Just as Stephen was stoned to death by the Jews as Paul (Saul) was standing by watching. Stephen was given a vision and he said Lord forgive them, they know not what they do.

God gave her strength and it was beautiful. She has her salvation and it is set in stone, never to be removed. How glorious and wonderful this conviction of Jesus was in her. A great testimony of conviction in Christ.

 

[Works4Him]

Greetings,

This was posted at another forum I frequent, and in my research on this post, I found this site. (On a slightly unrelated note, it looks like a great place to chat). Anyhow, over there I wrote a post explaining why I thought this was a hoax. For the edification of folks here, here's what I wrote:

While this story is very touching, the skeptic in me has some pretty strong suspicions that it's bogus. Here are a few of my reasons for suspicion:

Status of the author. The author claims "I did not know her, but my friend did". This is almost textbook hoax email fodder. Almost all of the major hoax emails ever have always included a line such as the line above, in some form or fashion - "This happened to a close friend of mine and he told me", "I heard this from a buddy", "a classmate at school told me". Most hoax authors put lines like this in their messages in part because they hope that if their fraud is ever found out, they can pass the buck.

Request to forward. Again, a textbook example of hoax emails is a request at the end to forward a message on, to as many people as you can. And sure enough right there at the end, we find "Copy and Paste it, put it in your notes too! Email it even!". So far that's two red flags for those keeping count.

General ambiguity. If the author was actually trying to get people to take notice, he would have included some verifiable data. Amal's last name, for example. Or the school she went to. Or what city this abduction took place in. Or her school. There is none of this. This is very suspicious, as if you were trying to expose a travesty to our beliefs, wouldn't you want people to know exactly who, what, where, when, and how this went down? The author did include one date, but that's hardly conclusive of anything. Besides, many hoaxers do include lots of details, even if they're false. But the total lack of anything verifiable throws up yet another red flag.

No news coverage. Okay, a person of Middle Eastern descent flying into the US is almost newsworthy in itself these days. But in this story, that person beat and then abducted a college student and somehow the story didn't make national headlines. Really? It would be in the papers, and people would be aware. But I scoured all the legitimate news sources I know of online, and no such story ever showed up. Even if you think all news is biased, you would think at least FOX would pick this one up. Put another red flag on the tally

No police involvement. If a college student is abducted, especially if she was beaten first, the police would be all over this like white on rice, which again would make headlines. The author says that "somebody tried calling the Syrian Embassy" but that makes no sense at all. If a crime is taking place on American soil, it is the police that take action, not any Embassy. Foreign Embassies only have jurisdiction up to the property lines of their embassy. Any crime happening in a college, or anywhere else is handled by the cops. And the cops WOULD have done something had this actually happened. And then, unless he killed her first in the US (which he did not), she would have had almost a solid 24 hours of flight time (I'll get to that later) to scream her lungs out and get someone's attention. Again, never happened. The flags are getting thick now.

Lack of factual continuity. The author explains why she never notified anyone for help by saying the brother took away all her forms of communication. While this may have helped to make a case for why she never called the cops or the press, it does not explain how the person relaying this story got that same information. Really, think about this. If you were an Islamic extremist so bent on taking your sister to be stoned that you've cut off her phone and internet, would you let her close enough to another human being to relay the story in person? No way! There just seems to be no way that a legitimate kidnapper would let all of this information about her abuse, and even about his taking away her communication, leak out to one of her friends.

Timeline issues. According to the author, the date of writing is April 15th, the day after the brother supposedly put her on a plane to Syria. The reason this is such a problem is that I checked, and the shortest air trip I could find from Chicago (I picked that as it's a good central location) to Syria takes over 24 hours to complete, assuming just reasonable layovers. That means, at the time of writing this, the best possible scenario is that Amal would just then be coming off the plane in Syria. Driving out to wherever her families village is (you can't stone someone in an airport) would add several more hours to the time, and having a mock trial and stoning would be even more time. At that point, somehow the story would have to get out of Syria, and make it's way back to this person, so he could learn about the stoning. Since I HIGHLY doubt that the family was twittering her execution, it would take days for this news to travel, if it ever left the country. So unless the author is clairvoyant, there is no way on earth he could have known all of this on the 15th, as it couldn't even have happened yet! Throw a huge red flag on top of the pile.

There are several other factors that make me suspicious of the legitimacy of this message, but seven red flags aught to be enough to encourage any readers to do your own research and apply some critical thinking to this story. The author may have meant well, but my opinion is that this story is nothing more than a dazzling work of fiction.

As I said in that post, it's very possible that the author meant well, or was trying to make a story to really drive home facts such as the ones provided by Gabe. At the same time, it's sad that a Christian would feel the need to lie about a story when there are already compelling true stories out there.

Cheers!

 

[Gabe]

...it's sad that a Christian would feel the need to lie about a story when there are already compelling true stories out there.

Exactly! I do not understand why anyone would think they need to lie. In recent years there have been literally thousands who have died or have faced serious persecution at the hands of Muslims for their faith. If anything, these hoaxes are harmful to those who are suffering.

 

[friend]

This could be a tactic of Satan, to try and scare people that Jesus is not with those who are his. Like Jesus gives no strength or help to his children for he certainly does. I have reservations about it being real all so. The story weakens the power of Christ with his people.

 

[azlan88]

Those darned Muslims! They're all the same! Evil! Just full of hate and loving on their stupid Muhammad! There I said it. I love Amal so much! It's the love of Jesus in me! The Holy Spirit's love, I know it!

 

[Gabe]

Those darned Muslims! They're all the same! Evil! Just full of hate and loving on their stupid Muhammad! There I said it. I love Amal so much! It's the love of Jesus in me! The Holy Spirit's love, I know it!

They're not all the same, and they're not all evil. The faith that they follow is what's evil.