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Islamic Republic of Iran: Nine Christians jailed for leaving Islam

Oct 23, 2019 12:00 pm By Robert Spencer

Imagine the outcry if nine Muslims had been jailed for leaving Christianity. But no one will take any significant notice of this.

In any case, it could have been worse. They could have been sentenced to death. The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law. It’s based on the Qur’an: “They wish you would disbelieve as they disbelieved so you would be alike. So do not take from among them allies until they emigrate for the cause of Allah. But if they turn away, then seize them and kill them wherever you find them and take not from among them any ally or helper.” (Qur’an 4:89)

A hadith depicts Muhammad saying: “Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him” (Bukhari 9.84.57). The death penalty for apostasy is part of Islamic law according to all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence.

This is still the position of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence, both Sunni and Shi’ite. Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the most renowned and prominent Muslim cleric in the world, has stated: “The Muslim jurists are unanimous that apostates must be punished, yet they differ as to determining the kind of punishment to be inflicted upon them. The majority of them, including the four main schools of jurisprudence (Hanafi, Maliki, Shafi’i, and Hanbali) as well as the other four schools of jurisprudence (the four Shiite schools of Az-Zaidiyyah, Al-Ithna-‘ashriyyah, Al-Ja’fariyyah, and Az-Zaheriyyah) agree that apostates must be executed.”

“Iran: ‘Nine Christians Jailed For Leaving Islam’,” by Stefan J Bos, BosNewsLife, October 21, 2019:

TEHRAN, IRAN: October 20, 2019. (Stefan J Bos for BosNewsLife)– An Iranian court has sentenced a pastor and eight fellow members of the big evangelical Church of Iran movement to jail for leaving Islam.

Church leader Matthias Haghnejad and the other believers were each sentenced to five years imprisonment after a short hearing on September 23, trial observers confirmed to BosNewsLife.

Pastor Haghnejad was detained by the feared Islamic Revolutionary Guard following a church service in February this year, said advocacy group Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), which supports the Christians.

The other believers Shahrouz Eslamdoust, Babak Hosseinzadeh, Behnam Akhlaghi, Mehdi Khatibi, Mohammad Vafadar, Kamal Naamanian, Hossein Kadivar (Elisha) and Khalil Dehghanpour were reportedly taken into custody in the coastal city of Rasht in early 2019….

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Filed Under: Featured, Iran, Muslim persecution of Christians Tagged With: Babak Hosseinzadeh, Behnam Akhlaghi, Hossein Kadivar (Elisha), Kamal Naamanian, Khalil Dehghanpour, Matthias Haghnejad, Mehdi Khatibi, Mohammad Vafadar, Shahrouz Eslamdoust


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Comments

  1. Ska says

    Oct 23, 2019 at 12:46 pm

    By sending them to prison where they will likely be killed at the hands of other prisoners the Iranian state avoids the opprobrium of executing people merely for their religious beliefs.

  2. Herb L says

    Oct 23, 2019 at 12:54 pm

    People of America, please rethink your decision to convert to Islam. If you find out that the real Islam is not what they said it is, you will never be able to leave. You will be killed for leaving Islam. There are many reasons to not even take their words of a peaceful Islam as they are only peaceful to other Muslims and converts, and all other will be killed. That is the agenda, to make Islam the sole religion of the world and they do it by force and intimidation and Jihad. We are Infidels and ALL infidels must be taken from the earth, by their Quran’s demands of Muslims to follow to the letter, with no questions to be asked. Nobody can read the Quran with understanding and have to have a Cleric to tell you what it means in any Suras or Hadiths, and they can make it anything they say it means. They call it the truth which is a true statement, and truth can be anything the stater of such lies can make it. FACTS on the other hand can not be changed or modified, it is what in reality it is. Facts are absolute and unchangeable and the Quran can not prove any truth to be FACT. Facts can be truth, but truth can not be FACT.

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 23, 2019 at 9:18 pm

      Herb, most Americans are *not* thinking of converting to Islam.

      • ninetyninepct says

        Oct 24, 2019 at 5:07 pm

        Please point out the word “most”.

        • gravenimage says

          Oct 24, 2019 at 11:43 pm

          All Muslims in the US add up to less than 1% of the population–this would not be true if Americans were mass converting to that vicious creed.

  3. R Russell says

    Oct 23, 2019 at 1:31 pm

    Lord Jesus, grant them increasing faith through this trial. Give them the courage to be true to you. If it comes to it, please allow their martyr hood to bring other Muslims to the friendship you offer.

    • Jap says

      Oct 23, 2019 at 5:48 pm

      Looked at your comment and substituted Jesus for Allah and Muslims for Christians.Sounded very much like the fanatics we are working against!
      If we allow our religious/spiritual beliefs to influence our thinking our judgement may become clouded when fighting evil. And this is what Islam wants, for us to lower ourselves to their level.

      • gravenimage says

        Oct 23, 2019 at 9:25 pm

        How does asking God for strength while being persecuted–even if you do not believe in God–sound like calling for violent Jihad? This is absurd.

        • Jap says

          Oct 24, 2019 at 6:05 am

          I did not say asking God for help is like violent Jihad.
          I simply advised against going down the same road as the enemy.
          And as for asking an historical figure for help rather than going straight to the source of all that is good in the universe,,,,,well, that’s a matter of choice.

        • gravenimage says

          Oct 24, 2019 at 11:46 pm

          Jap, Christians believe that Jesus *is* God.

          You don’t have to believe that, of course, but claiming that they are not going straight to the source is mistaken.

  4. Walter Sieruk says

    Oct 23, 2019 at 2:26 pm

    Concerning the news of the recent arrests imprisonment and the putting to death of those nine Christians of Iran further expose the intolerant brutal and murderous “mullah regime “ of Iran .

    First, it would be naive not to understand the those mullahs and ayatollahs didn’t have a hand in having their stooges , who are Islamic state police, the Revolutionary Guard s arrest those Christians because those in power in the Islamic tyranny are ruthless and cruel.

    Second, this is further proof that Islam is such a weak and fragile religion that the arrest of those few Christians was felt necessary by the ayatollah, mullah and imams of Iran. For those Muslim clerics are afraid that if the Iranian people even have a chance to examine and thus compare and contrast the Bible and the Quran the people of Iran might discover that the Bible of the super of those two books.
    Since the foundation for the tyrannical regime of the Islamic “Republic” of Iran is based on the Quran, which is also the entire foundation for of Islam, the Muslim clerics fear that their power base might collapse. So the arrests and sentencing to death of Christians reveals extreme fear those Muslim clerics have of the Bible, For this also show that those Muslim clerics in power in that “mullahs regime” of Iran will use .the Islamic state police and their tools to stop Christians and keep the Iranian people in in ignorance of the Bible and in the darkness of Islam.

    Third, those mullahs and ayatollahs and imams of Iran with their falsehoods and deceptions of the many false doctrines of Islam in which they brainwash the Iranian people in believing is something that is both sad and tragic. Those ayatollahs and mullahs are, no doubt, just as deluded as the people who they thoroughly indoctrinate with false teachings of Islam. Of such demonic deception by false teachers who are also deluded such men a have been predicted in the Bible. For in the Bible it’s written that “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived.” Second Timothy 3:13. [K.J.V.] All those mullahs and ayatollahs are, according to the doctrines of the Bible, Isaiah 8:20. false religious teachers .Meaning false teachers who teach and indoctrinate the false doctrines of the false religion of Islam into the hearts and minds of others . Such false teachers are described in the Bible ,in Second Peter 2:1. “There were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.”

    In addition, it should be make clear that in the context and meaning of the above Bible verse Second Peter 2:1. The word “destruction” does not mean “loss of being but loss of well-being ,as the destruction of well- being . That is “going to ruin” by ending up and a terrible place of awful suffering which the Bible call hell, Luke 16:19-31.

  5. somehistory says

    Oct 23, 2019 at 3:56 pm

    Christians are not surprised by persecution at the hands of individuals or the hands of governments.
    God gives Holy Spirit, and through it, strength and comfort for all things that may come as a result of exercising faith in Christ.

    And they know that they are better of as Christians, facing prison, and even death, than what they had as moslims in bondage to satan. It is my hope and prayer that they remain strong in faith and courage to face whatever our God allows, knowing there is a “large reward” for doing so.

  6. Angemon says

    Oct 23, 2019 at 3:57 pm

    Iran: ‘Nine Christians Jailed For Leaving Islam’

    “Dog bites man” news. And the bigotry of low expectations – had a Western nation jailed 9 converts to islam, we’d have outrage from the usual suspects (leftist Westerners, Putin, China, islamic world, etc). This, however, as the other cases of persecution of Christians in Iran, doesn’t make it to the mainstream news. No, much better to “expose” Trump because he *gasp* gets two scoops of ice cream after lunch instead of one. The fiend!!!!!

  7. gravenimage says

    Oct 23, 2019 at 9:17 pm

    Islamic Republic of Iran: Nine Christians jailed for leaving Islam
    ……………….

    Horrible persecution of apostates.

  8. John Magne Trane says

    Oct 24, 2019 at 6:00 am

    More authority about the murdering of people not wanting to be a member of your club any more:

    https://www.memri.org/tv/sheikh-al-azhar-ahmad-al-tayyeb-islam-unrepentant-apostates-should-be-killed-homosexuality

  9. Krishna says

    Oct 24, 2019 at 10:49 am

    Hope they survive in jail

  10. Goofy says

    Oct 24, 2019 at 12:58 pm

    I count the hours until Pope Francis has intervened and brought them into safety!

  11. toomanyhobbies says

    Oct 24, 2019 at 4:59 pm

    it’s a death sentence one way or another….

    • gravenimage says

      Oct 25, 2019 at 12:03 am

      Likely so.

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