According to an article at the Asssyrian International News Agency (19 July 2011), Christian pastor Yosef Nadarkhani has been officially asked to renounce his faith before being executd. Asking the condemned to return to Islam does not mean that he would be spared. The Islamic punishment for a male who turns his back on Islam is death. It doesn’t matter what school of Islamic thought you belong to (Hanbali, Hanafi, Maliki, Jafari, Shafi’i).
Here are some brief excerpts from the article:
Iran’s Supreme Court has upheld a lower court ruling that Yosef Nadarkhani,
a 32 year-old Iranian evangelical pastor, must reject his Christian faith
or be put to death. It’s the latest incident in the Islamist Republic’s
continuous and increased assault on its small Christian population.
Nadarkhani was first arrested on the charge of apostasy (leaving Islam for
another faith) in October 2009 and sentenced to death by hanging for his
refusal to teach Islam to Christian children. While Nadarkhani hadn’t practiced
any faith before he became a Christian at age 19, he was born to Muslim parents
and thus considered to be a Muslim under Islamic law.
As such, Nadarkhani’s conviction was upheld in September 2010 by a lower
Iranian court when it found that he had proven his apostasy by “organizing
evangelistic meetings, sharing his faith, inviting others to convert, and
running a house church.” At that point, Nadarkhani appealed to Iran’s Supreme
Court to have his death sentence reversed but that appeal has now been rejected.
…Nadarkhani now stands to be the first Iranian Christian executed for
apostasy since 1990.
Ironically, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah finds himself unable to provide his client
further legal assistance…he has just been sentenced by an Iranian court
to nine years in jail and a ten year ban on practicing law for “actions and
propaganda against the Islamic regime.”
…Nadarkhani’s case has also brought an outcry of protest from
a bevy of Christian organizations and human rights groups. One such group,
Christian Solidarity Worldwide (CSW), has pressed the Iranian government to
honor its adherence to the International Covenant for Civil and Political
Rights (ICPPR), a treaty which Iran signed and one which “guarantees freedom
of religion and freedom to change one’s religion or belief.”
…While Iran’s government has claimed that it tolerates other religions –
often citing Christians “protected” religious minority status under the
Iranian Constitution — the reality is far different. According to the 2010
State Department’s International Religious Freedom Report, Iran’s religious
minorities — which represent 2 percent of its population — face “substantial
societal discrimination.”
…the Iranian government has been targeting Iran’s growing network of “house
churches.” While the Iranian government allows officially sanctioned Christian
churches, they are closely monitored by Iranian authorities. To avoid that
scrutiny, Iranian Christians — many of whom are former Muslims — congregate
in private residences for prayer and Bible readings.
…For a regime whose survival necessitates total control over its citizenry,
that poses a particularly difficult problem for Iran’s Islamic authorities.
Moreover, that threat has only grown stronger since the internal unrest that
began in 2009 after the disputed election of Iranian President Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad.
…in the fall of 2010 when Iran’s Islamic leaders began publicly attacking
the house churches. That verbal assault culminated in a speech in October
2010 by Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in which he denounced
the growth of private house churches that “threaten Islamic faith and deceive
young Muslims.”
…From December 2010 through January 2011, it has been estimated that Iranian
authorities arrested over 120 Iranian Christians, most of whom were converts
from Islam. Since January 2011 an additional 285 Christians in 35 Iranian cities
have reportedly been arrested.
One of these detainees is Farshid Fathi who — according to the Iranian Christian
news agency Mohabat — was jailed without charge in December 2010, kept in
solitary confinement, and subjected to psychological torture in an effort to
“extract information on Christian networks in Iran.”
However, the whereabouts of people like Fathi are at least known. Others aren’t
so lucky. According to Iranian Pastor Hormoz Shariat of the International
Antioch Ministries, “Most often the Revolutionary Guards arrest and don’t even
tell their family. They can’t have a lawyer, not even a formal charge. Sometimes
they get killed without even a formal charge.”
…Iranian Ayatollah Mohammad Taghi Mesbah Yazdi declared only last week, “We
must end the Christian movement.”
Links to more articles, an this story, can be found below.
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Assyrian News Agency
