Iran Prepares To Execute Christian Minister On Charge He's An Apostate Of Islam

Islam is all about peace and tolerance. Unless.....

For the first time in 20 years, the Islamic Republic of Iran has issued a formal death sentence for a Christian. Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, leader of the Church of Iran denomination in Rasht, was arrested in October 2009 while seeking to register his church. He has been on death row since being found guilty of apostasy, conversion from Islam, in September 2010.

Pastor Nadarkhani’s appeal came to a conclusion on Wednesday, September 28. Iran's Supreme Court had refused to overturn his death sentence, referring his case back to local judges in Rasht to decide whether Nadarkhani had been a practising Muslim before converting to Christianity, something which Nadarkhani denied. Judges in Rasht ruled that although Nadarkhani had not been a practising Muslim, his Islamic heritage made him guilty of apostasy.

Although apostasy does not carry a formal death penalty under Iran’s penal code, judges in Rasht were able to use the supremacy of Islamic jurisprudence in Iran’s constitution to sue for the death sentence based on religious fatwas, or Islamic rulings, by leading Ayatollahs.

The silence from various quarters is deafening.

Remember when some crackpot pastor in Florida wanted to burn a koran? The world was outraged. Outraged! Apparently it's a big deal if you burn a book but not such a big deal if you appeal to that same book to kill a man because he doesn't believe in what's written in that book.

Or how about the Mohamed cartoons? The so-called "Muslim street" exploded (some what surprisingly, not literally for the most part) in protest. Where are those people now? Shouldn't Muslims around the world be in the streets of the Mideast and Euripoe protesting that this is not what their faith commands?

The same Muslims who demand that the west respect them and their faith damn well better get out there and demand in the same terms that their co-coreligionists not defame their faith with this barbarism. Otherwise we are left to conclude that their faith actually does demand this barbarism.

Mind you, I don't think every Muslim is answerable for this. Far from it. But non-Muslims aren't going to be the ones to bring Islam into modernity. It's going to have to be Muslims themselves. Keeping quiet doesn't serve any purpose and only causes non-Muslims to look at their religion with more than a small degree of distrust and disgust.

And let's be honest, it's not just the nutters in Iran who consider death the appropriate penalty for this "crime".

All that's missing are warnings that there better not be any backlash against Muslims.

Slu took the time to search Amnesty International website and you can see how much effort they have put into saving Nadarkhani compared to convicted cop killer Troy Davis.

Disgusting.

posted by DrewM. at 09:39 AM

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