In Aziz’s previous thread, several commenters said Fathima Rifka Bary may be “acting out” or lying to escape from her strict parents. Rifqa Bary doesn’t come off as contrived or manipulative. Much more alarming, her demeanor and her comments remind me of the poor damaged and deluded children that were at the center of the false ritual child abuse hysteria that blew out of America in the 1980s.

Some similarities:

1. The ritual abuse hysteria originated with children in the evangelical Christian community. Rifqa Bary has been a member of that community for some time, according to her parent’s reports that have her attending church with friends and proselytizing at school, though her brother says the accusations of violence didn’t start until she moved in with Pastor Blake Lorenz.

2. The ritual abuse children and their supporters frequently alleged human sacrifice was taking place (the person speaking in this video link, David Icke, is discredited here). As Richard Bartholomew observed, Rifqa Bary has claimed she will be killed in an “honor killing” – with a pecular definition of the term that makes it out to essentially be a human sacrifice to Allah.

3. The children accused specific adults – either their parents or others who were close to them – of horrible crimes, including murder. Rifqa Bary does the same.

4. The children of the ritual abuse hysteria told stories that mutated and grew over time becoming more elaborate and alleging grand conspiracies with large groups of people involved. Rifqa Bary is now alleging some group of people (“radical Muslims,” “suspected terrorists”) in the Muslim community of Columbus, Ohio, is out to kill her.

5. Another similarity is that the ritual child abuse allegations were examples of what London School of Economics professor Stanley Cohen called a “moral panic:”

A moral panic is the intensity of feeling expressed in a population about a specific group of people who appear to be a threat to the social order at a given time. Stanley Cohen, author of the seminal Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972), says moral panic occurs when “[a] condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.” Those who start the panic when they fear a threat to prevailing social or cultural values are known by researchers as “moral entrepreneurs”, while the people who supposedly threaten the social order have been described as “folk devils.” Moral panics are by-products of controversies that produce arguments and social tension, or aren’t easily discussed as some of these moral panics are taboo to many people.

Wikipedia cites several articles in concluding that “various actions in Western countries following the September 11 attacks affecting Arabs, Muslims, or those mistaken for them have been referred to as ‘moral panics.’” Rifqa Bary’s stories are the stuff of which ‘moral panics’ are made.