Faith
Under Fire...
Iran presses Christian pastor: Islam or death
By BENJAMIN WEINTHAL
11/07/2011 03:54
The Jerusalem Post
Iran’s security officials recently delivered a book on Islam to
Nadarkhani, Fox News says; he is in prison Rasht on the Caspian
Sea coast.
Talkbacks (11)
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 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.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader in Iran, has reacted to
pressure regarding Nadarkhani’s case, and Khamenei has the
authority to vacate the death penalty sentence against the pastor,
Wahdat-Hagh added.
“This case shows that Iran does not seek dialogue with Christians,
rather it wants to convince Christians of the correctness of
converting to Islam,” he said.