In Islamic law, the penalty for conversion from Islam is death. And dhimmis are strictly forbidden to proselytize. These warnings are in full accord with these provisions, once again illustrating that the "extremist" Muslims are the by-the-book types, and that only when moderate Muslims acknowledge, confront and repudiate what is actually taught in Islamic theology and law will reform even become possible.
From WND, with thanks to Cathy J. Palmer:
Terrorists have threatened retaliation against South Korea if the Asian nation sends missionaries to Iraq."We have received information that terrorists will act against South Korea if they find South Koreans have entered Iraq for the purpose of propagating Christianity,'' South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo Hyuck told reporters.
After the beheading of South Korean interpreter and businessman Kim Sun Il last month, Seoul advised all civilians to leave Iraq.
The group that murdered Kim, Tawhid wa al-Jihad, or Unification and Holy War, posted a message on its website saying the killing was linked to religious activities of the firm that employed Kim, Gana Trading Co.
Tawhid is not "unification," as it is translated here. It is the Islamic concept of the absolute unity of Allah, by which radical Muslims judge nearly every non-Muslim to be a polytheist -- and thus to be warred against, as per Sura 9:5 and many other passages of the Qur'an.
In a statement both in Arabic and English, the group said Kim, with degrees in the Arabic language and theology, wanted to be a Christian missionary in the Arab world.The terrorist group said, "We killed him because he was a heretic who tried to spread Christianity in Iraq. The president of Gana Trading is also a sincere Christian. He contributes 10 percent of his earnings for missionary work and the company's name also comes from the Bible."
Elsewhere at Jihadwatch, the successful attempt by "Palestinian"-American Islamochristians, burrowing within the Presbyterian Church bureaucracy to obtain their desired goal: having the Church officially endorse the idea that Israel is an "apartheid" state (when, of course, it is the Arab and Muslim countries that are based, from top to bottom (just look at all the "Muslim" and "Non-Muslim" signs at every counter, virtually everywhere in Saudi Arabia), on the manichaen distinction between Believer and Infidel. One has to be completely ignorant of the real situation in Israel (where Arabs vote, are elected to the Knesset, and have full civil rights except, naturally, the requirement that they serve in the army though some, including many Druse, do), and of the real tenets of Islam, to come to such a conclusion so morally moronic. Many in the Presybertian bureacracy, having been over the last few years incessantly brainwashed by assorted Arab ministers, one or two of whom have actually been the Moderators of the Church (one Arab-American islamochristian, in the Naim Ateek--Hilarion Cappucci--Michel Sabbagh lien, has been operating out of his church ministry in Atlanta, quite successfully), aided of course by those ever-present "peace activists" (a term which means "anti-Israel" and "anti-American"--it has nothing to do with the murder of millions of black non-Muslims and non-Arab Muslims in the Sudan, or enslavement of blacks in Mali, Mauritania, and the Sudan, nor anything to do with the murder of Christians in Indonesia, Pakistan, nor...well, that let us be charitable and just say that the "peace activism" of these Presbyterian-sponsored (how many of them actually are practicing Christians is anyone's guess) "peace activists" is highly selective.
One doubts if the Arab-American Presbyterian minister in Atlanta, a recent "Moderator," is terribly exercised about Muslim treatment of Christians, or that he has been galvanizing his fellow Presyberians to work actively against Muslim oppression of Copts in Egypt, of Ibo Christians in Nigeria, of Maronites (who are Arabic-speaking, but not Arabs) in Lebanon, of those French and Italian monks killed in Algeria by the Islamic F.I.S., of the destruction of 2,300 churches in Indonesia last year by Muslims, or the murder of Christians in the Moluccas, and Sulawesi, and in Pakistan, and in....Well, at least one wishes to know. Has the Presyberian Church, the same church that prates about "apartheid" in free, civilised Israel and ignores the massacres and persecution of Christians by Muslims, whose religion is not merely one of "apartheid" (if it were only a question of "separateness" all those Christians, Jews, Zoroastrians, Hindus, and others would breath a sigh of relief, over 1350 years of killing, forced conversion, and dhimmitude), but of the requirement that Islam subjuate all the lands of the Infidels and make those lands fit for the spread of Islam, by subjugating its previously non-Muslim population.
Is every presybterian layman, every official in the bureaucracy, completely buffaloed by this? It is fashionable to use the word "hijacking" today. Often it is misused, as in "Bin Ladne hijacked a great religion." Well, it certainly fits here: a determined and malevolent and focussed group, working over several years, has now hijacked the Presbyterian Church. Anyone in that Church want to try to raise this matter, and not just with a whimper but with a rhetorical bang? You have nothing to lose. You have already lost control of your church; it already is embracing a kind of marcionism (the same kind being promoted among the Anglicans by Rev. Stephen Sizer of Virginia Water, in order to deprive Israel and "the Jews" of any sympathy based on the link between Old and New Testament dispensations)if there is out there a single reader, who has something to do with the Presbyterian Church, perhaps he or she can find out -- has there been a peep out of those Arab Islamocrhistians, or out of those "peace activists" about any of this? And if there has not been such a peep, about any of this, about at least the ongoing Muslim attacks in Indonesia, in the Sudan, in Pakistan, in Egypt, indeed everywhere that Muslims believe they can, with impunity, attack Christians (or Jews, or HIndus, or Sikhs, or those who choose to leave Islam), then one must ask: Why? Why no peep? Why not even the thinnest of chirps? Is it because those chicks, and the hens, and the roosters, sense a wolf lurking just outside the barnyard, and they had better beat up on Israel, or on American foreign policy, because those, of course, will who, wrapping themselves in the mantle of the Presbyterian bureacracy, have forced down the throats of many unsuspecting and unaware Presyberians in this country, policies and rhetoric which many of them would deplore, if they knew and understood.
And why is this here, under an item about that South Korean who was decapitated because he actually believed in the message of Christianity, and actually wanted to bring it to the Muslims of Iraq? Was that a crime? Was that an act of imperialism? Was he behaving nobly in wishing to do that, and was he cruelly put to death for that wish? The truest Christians among the Presyberians in the United States today are those descendants of Korean Presybertians, who came to Christianity through the unstoppable efforts of the Reverend Horace Underwood. He brought Christianity; he founded the Chosen Christian College. He would have been pleased with the strength of faith of Korean Christians. He would have deplored the sinister takeover of official Presyberianism by determined cells of Arab-American and in some cases simply Arab islamochristians and their leftist, "peace activist" supporters, who have ignored completely the murders and massacres of Christians.
One hopes that the Koreans among the Presybterians, who may feel more keenly the attacks on Christians worldwide, will come to realize what is going on, and the need to take back their own church from the coup d'etat -- as yet unrecognized -- that has taken place, as reflected by this morally unacceptable resolution, composed, presented, and carefully steered to adoption by a group that would have done Communist infiltrators of the ILGWU, or the Screen Actors' Guild, in another era, proud.
Admire the courage and fervour of South Korean Missionaries but would rather they stayed alive.
Believe Kim was probably killed for that reason
although Zarqawi and his murderous followers are not too nice about motives when it comes to shedding 'fragant blood 'to Allah. Understand Zarqawi was formerly a Pediatrician. Strange, thought he would have been an Undertaker...
If islam was truly the "great religion" it claims to be muslim leaders would not be threatened by their followers learning about other religions...what is the big fear...that muslims may start to question what is in the koran...and realize that none of it makes any sense?
Hugh,
When you used the word 'Marcionite' you put your finger on the heart of the problem. The Marcionite Tendency - aka liberal theology - has undermined the Bible as our source of spiritual and moral authority. We are now harvesting its poisonous fruiut.
For non-theologians Marcion (excommunicated c144 AD) was an early heretic who :
Didn't like the Old Testament;
Didn't like the Jews;
Rejected Marriage;
Believed the New Testament had been corrupted - by the Jews;
Believed in the Christ, who only seemed to suffer and die rather than in the Jew, Jesus of Nazareth;
Chose only to believe those bits of scripture he personally approved of....
Nothing new under the sun!
When you study cults and heresy, with an open and honest mind, it becomes painfully evident that Islam is a cult, based on a Judeo-Christian heresy admixtured with Arabian paganism, which occasionally behaves like a religion. Cults never let you go.