The case “should be an eye-opener for world leaders,” but it won't be.
No Compulsion In Religion Alert, and an update on this story. "Iran presses pastor: Islam or death," by Benjamin Weinthal in the Jerusalem Post, November 7:
Iran’s government and security apparatus have ratcheted up the pressure on Evangelical pastor Youcef Nadarkhani to convert to Islam or face execution, Fox News reported on Saturday.Youcef Nadarkhani, now 34, was arrested in 2009 for questioning the compulsory Islamic education of his children and for seeking to register a home-based church. He was sentenced to death in 2010.
Iran’s security officials recently delivered a book on Islam to Nadarkhani, Fox News said. He is in prison Rasht on the Caspian Sea coast.
The Iranian officials told “him they would be back to discuss the material and hear his opinion,” according to the report.
Fox cited “sources close to the case.”
David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, told The Jerusalem Post on Sunday the new development is “very troubling.”
There need to be “three attempts to make him convert to Islam before they can kill him,” Parsons said. He cited Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for the threeattempts [sic] rule.
Iran “is going through the motions” and “trying to do it in a very public way for the Muslim world and maybe, in their mind, thinking they can placate the West. It is outrageous,” said Parsons, who is a contributing editor to The Jerusalem Post Christian Edition.
The case “should be an eye-opener for world leaders,” he said. “They should know what Islam teaches in terms of ‘inferior religions’ like Judaism and Christianity.”
Fox News wrote that it secured “a digital copy of the book given to Nadarkhani, a 300-page compilation entitled Beshaarat-eh Ahdein, meaning ‘Message of the Two Eras,’ referring to the New and Old Testaments. Through various narratives, the book claims Christianity is a fabrication and attempts to establish the superiority of Islam.”
Parsons said it “needs to be a priority to hold the Iranian regime accountable.
Governments, even Muslim governments, should not be allowing this. How can anyone find this acceptable this day?” Present Truth Ministries has campaigned since 2009 for Nadarkhani’s release and works to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East. “We cannot wait another moment, we have to contact our elected officials,” the USbased organization urges on its website in connection with Nadarkhani.
Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an authority on minority groups in the Islamic Republic of Iran, told the Post by phone from Berlin on Sunday that the book given to Nadarkhani, Beshaarat-eh Ahdein, is “religious indoctrination.”
There is “no freedom of opinion or religion in Iran,” he said. The Iranian regime has been closing newspapers and “there is no freedom of conscience” in the Islamic Republic.
The book argues against the Judaism and Christianity, as well as against Bahais and Zoroastrians, Wahdat-Hagh, a senior fellow at the European Foundation for Democracy in Brussels, wrote in a followup e-mail.
“The fact that Mr. Nadarkhani was given this book makes clear that it does not deal with freedom of conscience, which does not exist in Iran, rather it deals with propaganda...,” he said....
Freedom of conscience doesn't exist not just in Iran, but in Islam. As Muhammad said: "If anyone changes his religion, kill him." (Bukhari 9.84.57).
Again I say, what's with the Shia Jafari in Iran? They know that Aql (reasoning) is essential for deriving laws and they don't use Qiyas (analogy). In other words, they have the right to use their BRAIN over applying an Islamic commandment and yet they DON'T. This is once again proof that Muslims even though they have the choice to "get rid of the death sentence" they won't and don't.
http://english.khamenei.ir//index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1552
Here's a laugh...
"Supreme Leader of Iran: "The USA is the world's biggest terrorist."
Yeah...
I shake my head at this sad news. A dark cloud of ignorance and superstition still engulfs a part of humanity.
No one is innocent. It's a matter of how guilty and of what. As far as any adult Muslim is concerned, it's a matter of letting some greater power figuring it out later.
There's freedom. Freedom to choose death over conversion. That is the most powerful freedom of all. Knowing that you are going to die if you don't do what they want you to do, and then not doing it, anyway. His death will be a victory for every follower of Jesus Christ, because the man who doesn't fear death will be hard to keep in the grave. Never underestimate the power of one man's choice on millions of people watching.
Said so many times on this blog---"You cant make this stuff up"! When does the western world wakey wakey to this----stuff? How is this allowed to encroach on civilized society? If they had a standing army we would engage and win, but with the religion tag they get a bye?? Why? We in the west have a great respect for other religions who practice peacefully. That's fine. Practice your religion peacefully and we will respect your right to do so. The fact that the bonafides (yes, the good faith and honesty) of this "belief"; the markers, the norm, the SOP, are murder, rape, and subjugation. This makes the puzzling acceptance of their presence and practices all the more reprehensible. They are behind the wire and we seem to have a blindness cleverly created by the liberal socio-globo msm who have worked their "mo-jo" from the sixties. Is Mike right? Is the dark cloud of ignorance and superstition just "over there" or resident here also? We know the answer, don't we.
I = inhumane
S = savage
L = laughable
A = amoral
M = manic
The monster requires human sacrifices. It will have bl-o-o-o-d!
Do it our way or else
It's the Islamic way....
The Iranian officials told “him they would be back to discuss the material and hear his opinion,” according to the report.
Here's how the good Pastor should respond:
Cossacks to Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV:
--Now that's putting things bluntly! (And equally relevant today!)
" the book claims Christianity is a fabrication and attempts to establish the superiority of Islam"
The stupidity of Islam:
Muhammad and his companions believed that ants, stones, trees and food could talk, that stones could run, that the sun will rise from the west, that humans were turned to animals etc...
These stories are some of the clearest examples of just how irrational and silly the Islamic traditions can be. These stories should make it apparent to any rational minded person that Islam cannot be a religion revealed by God.
http://crossmuslims.blogspot.com/2011/09/stoned-by-monkeys.html
In core Islamic texts, Muhammad says your "lives and property" are not safe from him unless you become a Muslim
In Sahih al-Bukhari and Sahih Muslim, the two most canonical hadith collections:
Bukhari, Volume 1, Book 2, Number 25:
Sahih Muslim, Book 031, Number 5917:
9:29 FIGHT THOSE who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day"
9:5 "KILL THE MUSHRIKUN (polytheists, pagans, idolaters, disbelievers in the Oneness of Allah, i.e., ALL non-Muslims who are najis (filthy 9:28} WHEREVER YOU FIND THEM."
8:39, 2:193 "...and religion should be only for Allah"
4:89 Death for Apostasy
By golly those Cossacks said it right Boneshack.
''Cossacks to Turkish Sultan Mehmed IV''
I *love* it. Where does it come from ?
Does anyone know if there is a petition on this courageous mans' behalf ?
You can find a petition here:
http://aclj.org/iran/pressure-iran-save-christian-pastor
You provided: aclj.org
Thank you.
It became Wednesday's homework assignment for my Advanced English classes today.
_____________________
Pastor Youcef will not die. We must keep writing, but he will not die.
If they put him to death, the whole House of Islamic Cards comes tumbling down. The Iranian authorities are stupid, yes, but not ignorant.
If they kill Nadarkhani, they kill Islam, and they'll never do that, at least, willingly.
You provided: aclj.org
Thank you.
It became Wednesday's homework assignment for my Advanced English classes today.
_____________________
Pastor Youcef will not die. We must keep writing, but he will not die.
If they put him to death, the whole House of Islamic Cards comes tumbling down. The Iranian authorities are stupid, yes, but not ignorant.
If they kill Nadarkhani, they kill Islam, and they'll never do that, at least, willingly.
You provided: aclj.org
Thank you.
It became Wednesday's homework assignment for my Advanced English classes today.
_____________________
Pastor Youcef will not die. We must keep writing, but he will not die.
If they put him to death, the whole House of Islamic Cards comes tumbling down. The Iranian authorities are stupid, yes, but not ignorant.
If they kill Nadarkhani, they kill Islam, and they'll never do that, at least, willingly.
crap!
So sorry for the triple post. I have a new little cat and she is, how shall we say, "interested"? in the laptop...
If Iran executes Yusuf Nadarkhani, all free majority-Christian nations will have the perfect excuse for 1. expelling Iranian diplomats and 2. slamming the door shut against ANY Mohammedan from Iran who wants to get into the non-Muslim lands: NO 'tourists', NO 'students', NO 'businessmen', NO persons seeking the advanced medicine available only in the West, and above all..NO Mohammedan Persian invaders/ colonists (oops, 'immigrants').
END all trade relations whatsoever...got that, France? Got that, Germany?
German Christians should be telling their government and businesses that if Iran publicly and vauntingly executes a Christian for the 'crime' of having been born to Muslim parents and then chosen to become a Christian, ALL business relations, trade and diplomatic relations with the abomination that is Iran, should cease.
I think that some of Paul's responses to his persecutors, as recorded in the book of Acts, would be better.
Christian-majority nations?
In the USA, we are supposedly such a thing, yet we elected, by the largest popular vote in a decade or more, a president who while claiming to be a "Christian", heads an administration whose foreign policy seems unconcerned about this kind of question.
As for most of Europe, who are we trying to kid? In Britain, the engine of the 19th century's missionary movement, theological liberalism has so gutted the churches of spiritual vitality that more Muslims are in mosque on Friday there than Christians in churches on Sunday, even though Muslims are a clear minority of the population. The behavior of most of the established churches of Europe and the "mainstream" in America is more concerned about silencing everyone who is unenthusaistic about a GLBT ministry than about persecution.
This is one reason why, as I look at the civilization to which I belong, a shudder runs up and down my spine every time I read biblical prophecy--and as someone who reads through the Bible yearly, I now swim in my own tears over the state of the so-called "Christian" world.
I guess I'm maybe just a bit more hopeful than you are.
As regards Europe, I cannot believe that the decades of patient seed-sowing by Francis Schaeffer's L'Abri ministry, or the equally steadfast witness of Brother Roger at Taize to young people coming from all over Europe and beyond, or for that matter the lifelong witness of people like Jacques Ellul (who led Bible studies and did all kinds of 'grassroots' face-to-face work with people, besides producing his much better known scholarly and theological writings) will bear NO fruit whatsoever.
I correspond regularly with a lady in the UK whose church - an Anglican congregation housed in a lovely old building that goes back to the middle ages - is very much alive and well, thank you very much, and has given birth to two 'daughter' churches. They have a large and lively toddlers' group, and a strong ministry to children and young people. And they're not the *only* such church in Britain. There *are* others.
I remember a poster here, from Italy, who told us once that the church in Italy had had to dust off its form of service for the baptism of adults, as they were getting a steady trickle of 'nicodemus' style inquirers and conversions from Islam. There must be *something* going on, if even in supposedly spiritually-dead Europe some Muslims are leaving Islam and knocking on the doors of the churches. Magdi Cristiano Allam, even before he himself converted, wrote an article on what he called 'the church of the catacombs' - the underground church in Italy comprising apostates from Islam. The Times a few years ago wrote a whole long article about the Muslim-background-believers in the UK who were enduring persecution from their former co-religionists - they found plenty of them to talk to, as did some folks who did a TV doco on the same subject; one young woman was baptised in despite of the shrieks and curses of her Muslim mother who didn't actually try to kill her but did try to disrupt the service. This, I gather, not in some Pentecostal or Baptist tabernacle, but in a plain old Anglican parish church...she and the priest simply ignored Muslim mama's shrieks and proceeded with the ceremony.
Australians do Christianity differently from either the UK or the USA, but I belonged to an extremely lively - and flourishing - evangelical Anglican parish for many years (I'm now somewhere else, but I gather that particular parish is still flourishing, and has had a HUGE baby boom in the past five years, and is continuing its very large ministry among overseas students at the nearby University), and the Church Missionary Society, which I and my husband support with regular donations, and which is the main evangelical Anglican mission group, doesn't seem to be running out of volunteers.
There's still spiritual life in supposedly godless secular Australia.
Don't write Europe off, either. Make a list of a dozen cities, and PRAY.
This may seem odd to you, but I know exactly which towns and villages - in England, in Scotland, in Ireland, Denmark and Germany - my various migrant ancestors came from. And now, knowing of the onslaught of Islam, I pray by name for those places, asking God to revive the Christian community there.
Iran to Christian pastor: Convert to Islam or die
The case “should be an eye-opener for world leaders,” but it won't be.
...............................
Is *any* nation offering this poor man asylum?