Islamic tolerance alert from Iran. “Iran: Convert stabbed to death,” from Compass Direct, with thanks to all who sent this in:
November 28 (Compass) — An Iranian convert to Christianity was kidnapped last week from his home in northeastern Iran and stabbed to death, his bleeding body thrown in front of his home a few hours later.
Ghorban Tori, 50, was pastoring an independent house church of convert Christians in Gonbad-e-Kavus, a town just east of the Caspian Sea along the Turkmenistan border.
Within hours of the November 22 murder, local secret police arrived at the martyred pastor’s home, searching for Bibles and other banned Christian books in the Farsi language. By the end of the following day, the secret police had also raided the houses of all other known Christian believers in the city.
According to one informed Iranian source, during the past eight days representatives of the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) have arrested and severely tortured 10 other Christians in several cities, including Tehran. All the detainees have since been released….
A former Muslim of Turkmen descent, Tori had converted to Christianity more than 10 years ago, while in Turkmenistan….
But not all welcomed his message; at least one relative attacked Tori, scarring his face. In the past year he received several threats from Islamic extremists vowing to kill him if he did not stop sharing his Christian faith….
He is the fifth Protestant pastor assassinated in Iran by unidentified killers in the past 11 years. Three of the five were former Muslims, under Iranian law subject to the death penalty for having committed apostasy….
Tori’s murder came just days after Iran’s new hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called an open meeting with the nation’s 30 provincial governors. During the session, an Iranian source told Compass, Ahmadinejad declared that the government needed to put a stop to the burgeoning movement of house churches across Iran.
“I will stop Christianity in this country,” Ahmadinejad reportedly vowed.
“This was apparently a green light from the president of Iran to go out and start killing Christians,” the source said.