Following Muhammad's own instructions. "Iran - Christians charged with 'apostasy'," from Compass Direct News, September 10:
LOS ANGELES, September 10 (Compass Direct News) – Two Iranian Christians have officially been charged with “apostasy,” or leaving Islam, as a draft law making the death penalty mandatory for those convicted of the charge is set to be debated in Iran’s Parliament.
Mahmood Matin Azad, 52, and Arash Basirat (previously reported Bandari), 44, have been in prison since May 15, when they were arrested in Shiraz. When their lawyer went to authorities to inquire about the case in early August, he was informed that the two men had been formally charged with apostasy, sources confirmed to Compass.
At that time authorities gave the lawyer an official document stating that the formal charge of “apostasy” was based on the men’s confessions during interrogation. The “Interrogation Note – Investigator’s Final Order” said that their “culpability order” was based on Article 214 of the penal code and sections of the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s treatise on legal affairs, the Tahrir ol Vassileh. Iran’s legal system is based on sharia (Islamic law).
Previous charges of “Propaganda Against the Islamic Republic of Iran” had been dropped, according to the statement.
Sources who spoke to the lawyer explained that authorities generally do not issue written statements, and that this was an indication of the severity and complexity of the case.
With the apostasy bill to be debated in Parliament, some Iranian Christians fear that authorities are seeking to make an example of the two prisoners or give the prospective law a “test run.”
‘Interesting and Sensitive’
In February the Iranian Parliament proposed a draft penal code that demands the death penalty for leaving Islam. Under current Iranian law, apostasy is considered a capital offense, but punishment is left to the discretion of the judge.
Basirat, who suffers from diabetes, and Matin are expected to appear in court within the next few weeks with their lawyer in order to defend their case. They would not officially be found guilty unless evidence presented at the hearing were incriminating.
Meantime, the families of Basirat and Matin have tried unsuccessfully to get the prisoners out on bail before the trial takes place. The last week of August the lawyer instructed Matin’s wife to prepare a bail sum of around $40,000 to $50,000. But when the lawyer tried to get the necessary paperwork and signatures from the judge, the bail amount was denied.
Fearing that the bail amount may be doubled, the defense attorney told a source close to Matin’s family that the case had become “interesting and sensitive” for the judge and authorities, and therefore they would not “let it go so easily.”
Basirat’s family also tried to release him on bail by offering the deed of their home, but authorities have not accepted it.
The defense team has suggested that the defendants seek that international pressure be brought to bear on Iranian authorities to release Basirat and Matin and clear their names of any wrongdoing.
Meanwhile, the Bush Administration, flailing about, and not knowing what next to do in Iraq (where the "surge is working" but as soon as the Americans pull out, sectarian and ethnic fissures held in check or temporarily suppressed will reassert themselves,and then, only then, will come the only American "victory" that makes sense), and realizing that there is no "victory" to be had in Afghanistan, nor in Pakistan, though the realization that it is not a question of troops, nor of lavishing more money on development projects, but of understanding, grasping, the meaning of dealing with large primitive populations in permanent thrall to Islam, which means they can never regard Infidels with anything but fleeting, and usually feigned, gratitude, and will always be prey to the texts, and tenets, of Islam, or at least be unwilling to stand up against fellow Muslims, however monstrous, if to do so can be seen as helping Infidels. And it can always be seen as helping Infidels.
And what is the American answer to the greatest threat in the region, the Islamic Republic of Iran that wishes, clearly, to now punish apostates with death? It is to not only have abandoned any attempt to deal with Iran, as everyone assumed the Bush Administration, having exhausted every other avenue (or don't five years of negotiating, by the Europeans and, indireclty, the Americans, constitute "exhausting" every other avenue), would deal militarily with the matter.
But it won't. Stuck to Tarbaby Iraq, and now, too, to Tarbaby Afghanistan, the Administration not only will not attack Iran's nuclear project (a very different thing from invading Iran, or remaining in Iran to repeat the idiocy of the messianic Iraq venture, bringing "freedom" to more "ordinary moms and dads" in the Middle East), but what is incredible, what makes one rubs one's eyes in disbelief, is that the Administration will not give Israel, willing to do the Infidel world's job for it, has apparently been denied not only the much needed bunker-busters, but also has been denied the right to overfly Iraq. And the reason given, the one that Admiral Mullen delivered to the Israelis, is that if they were to attack Iran's nuclear project -- essential for Israel's survival -- this would "harm" American efforts in Iraq (Tarbaby Iraq, where the strategy is exactly the wrong one, and will fail, no matter what, thank god, giving way to the real victory to be achieved, as soon as the Americans leave) and Afghanistan (another hopeless case). So because this Administration remains utterly confused about the Jihad, what it actually means, what its immutable textual sources are, and why they are not to be removed by any lavishing of aid, or improvement in Muslim living standards. And still worse, the Administration remains seemingly oblivious to the most important battleground, Western Europe, and incapable of recognizing that the main weapons to worry about in Western Europe are not terror but rather the Money Weapon, campaigns of Da'wa, and demographic conquest.
There should be two main goals: keeping major weaponry out of Muslim hands, and halting any increase, and working imaginatively to diminish, the Muslim presence in Western Europe and North America, because it represents a permanent threat, the ideological threat to all Infidel legal and political instiutions, and the physical threat to Infidels themselves.
Israel is willing, it appears, to take on the risk and the burden that should rightly be assumed by the United States -- just as it did with the Osirak reactor in 1981, or earlier this year with that North Korean nuclear installation in Syria. But it cannot do so if the American government lets it down and will not give in the tools, nor even allow it overflights (reportedly, the Americans said Israel would have to clear such flights with Nouri al-Maliki -- the callousness and cruelty of this response, and all that it implies, simply astounds).
Unwilling or unable to recognize how much more important it is to prevent the Islamic Republic of Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, than in bringing "freedom" (and stability, and prosperity) to "ordinary moms and dads" in either Iraq or Afghanistan -- a goal both unattainable and wrong -- the Administration flails about, and puts Israel in mortal peril.
Everyone should be up in arms, but few are paying attention. They become distracted by trivia If what what one wishes is to diminish the over-all threat from the Camp of Islam, one can only arrive at an effective policy by studying the texts and tenets of Islam, the behavior of Muslims toward non-Muslims over the past 1350 years, and the observable behavior of Muslims toward non-Muslims today, both in Muslim-ruled countries (how do Hindus fare in Pakistan and Bangladesh? how do Christians fare in the Sudan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Kuwait, the U.A.E., Pakistan, Indonesia? how do Buddhists do in Muslim-populated areas of Thailand?) and in the Lands of the Infidels, where Muslims are constantly making demands, constantly exerting every sort of pressure to force changes in the rules, in the social arrangements and understandings, in the laws themselves (including the laws that protect freedom of speech and freedom of conscience), and will never give up making those demands, or exerting that pressure, no matter how much resistance they face, for Islamic doctrine does not change, and why should any Muslim change his beliefs simply because he lives among Infidels, among whom the numbers of Muslims steadily grows, and with it their perceived power.).
This is an Administration that has let seven years go buy. It has failed to educate itself about Islam. It of course has not been able to instruct the public. For all the huge expense, and messianic sentimentalism, and absurd claims about Islam and its "peaceful" nature, presumably part of the constant attempts (Iftar dinners, Ramadan proclamations, the works) to curry favor with imagined "moderate" Muslims (never defined, and the concept never held up for inspection), the Muslim numbers rise steadily in Westen Europe (and in Russia, where there has been no attempt to appeal to Russian nationalism about a shared threat, an appeal that just might have made many Russians less convinced of an American-led "conspiracy" to "surround" Russia, when the only thing Americans should want is that the Russians do not so diminish in numbers that political power in Russia itself is seized by Muslims, organized and unified, even before they come to constitute a majority).
An administration that, in order to "save all the progress" it has made in Iraq (!) and Afghanistan (!) is willing to condemn Israel to living in a state of peril that we would not stand, if it were our country, not for one second. Israel has been a staunch ally. Israel is now willing to take on the burden alone. And the American government, far from extending as it should every assistance, is blocking Israel at every turn.
This should be made a campaign issue. One that both candidates must address. Let's find out what they think should be done about Iran, and which of them, if he were to become President, would allow those Israeli overflights, would promise to immediately supply Israel with those bunker-busters, and would exhibit some glimmer of understanding that Iran's nuclear project matters far more than a few more months of phony "stability" in Iraq, or a few more months of pretend-coooperation by the Pakistani military.
How dumb does everyone have to be?
Hugh - when I read that news about the refusal to give the bunker-busters, and the refusal to permit a flyover (as also, some time ago, the refusal to sell Israel any F22s) I felt physically sick. This is morally appalling.
I can only conclude that Muslim infiltrators in the State Department, in alliance with antisemite Arabists, are hell-bent on delivering Israel, tied hand and foot, into the hands of the sadistic jihadists whose soul we saw exposed on that beach where Samir Kuntar smashed a little Jewish girl's head with his rifle butt and a rock.
I begin to think there are people (non-Muslims) in Europe, in the USA, in other places, who in their black hearts are slavering with anticipation of a second Shoah, that Shoah which, Jacques Ellul warned in 1991, "the Muslims have prepared", and are doing everything they can to assist.
What - what - what can we, anywhere in the non-Muslim lands, do, to protest this...this obscenity? To try to prevent it, at the eleventh hour?