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Permalink Reply by Kinana on September 30, 2011 at 12:13

Christian Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani faces potential execution

By Jordan Sekulow

Just days after Iran released two Americans accused of spying, an Iranian court has upheld the apostasy conviction and execution sentence of Christian Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani.

The 11th branch of Iran’s Gilan Provincial Court has determined that Nadarkhani has Islamic ancestry and therefore must recant his faith in Jesus Christ. Iran’s supreme court had previously ruled that the trial court must determine if Youcef had been a Muslim before converting to Christianity.

However, the judges, acting like terrorists with a hostage, demanded that he recant his faith in Christ before even taking evidence. The judges stated that even though the judgment they have made is against the current Iranian and international laws, they have to uphold the previous decision of the 27th Branch of the Supreme Court in Qom.

July-December, 2010 International Religious Freedom Report, U.S. De...

When asked to “repent” by the judges, Youcef stated, “Repent means to return. What should I return to? To the blasphemy that I had before my faith in Christ?” The judges replied , “To the religion of your ancestors, Islam.” To which he replied, “I cannot.”

It is reported that Youcef was able to see his children for the first time since March and was in good spirits speaking of how he longed to serve the church upon his release.

Pastor Youcef will be brought to the court for two additional “hearings” on September 27th and 28th for the sole purpose of being called upon to recant his Christian faith. The ACLJ’s sources report that although Pastor Youcef’s attorneys will attempt to appeal the case, there is no guarantee that the provincial court will not act on its own interpretation of Sharia law and execute pastor Youcef as early as Wednesday.

Technically, there is no right of appeal, and under Iran’s interpretation of Hadith and Sharia law, Pastor Youcef is to be given three chances to recant. He has already been asked to recant twice, and will be asked to do so again Tuesday. If he does not recant his Christian faith, he could be executed at any time.

We are continuing to press for the international community to take note of Youcef’s situation and call for his unconditional release. We are also continuing to work with members of Congress and are urging the State Department to get involved to save the life of this Christian pastor.

There is still time to save this pastor’s life.

Please share Youcef’s situation with anyone you know and pray for his release and the safety of his attorney, a brave Muslim who has been sentenced to nine years in prison and banned from practicing law by the Iranian government.

Firouz Sadegh-Khandjani, a Member of the Council of Elders for the Church of Iran and a close personal friend of Youcef, called into my radio show Tuesday from Iran to provide an update on Pastor Youcef. You can listen to the interview here.

Update: Speaker of the House John Boehner released the following statement on the case:

Religious freedom is a universal human right. The reports that Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani will be sentenced to death by the Iranian government unless he disavows his Christian faith are distressing for people of every country and creed. While Iran’s government claims to promote tolerance, it continues to imprison many of its people because of their faith. This goes beyond the law to an issue of fundamental respect for human dignity. I urge Iran’s leaders to abandon this dark path, spare Yousef Nadarkhani’s life, and grant him a full and unconditional release.

 

 

By Jordan Sekulow  |  01:16 PM ET, 09/27/2011

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/religious-right-now/post/christ...

 

Permalink Reply by Kinana on September 30, 2011 at 13:02

The White House

Office of the Press Secretary

For Immediate Release

September 29, 2011

Statement by the Press Secretary on Conviction of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani

The United States condemns the conviction of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani.  Pastor Nadarkhani has done nothing more than maintain his devout faith, which is a universal right for all people.  That the Iranian authorities would try to force him to renounce that faith violates the religious values they claim to defend, crosses all bounds of decency, and breaches Iran’s own international obligations.   A decision to impose the death penalty would further demonstrate the Iranian authorities' utter disregard for religious freedom, and highlight Iran's continuing violation of the universal rights of its citizens.  We call upon the Iranian authorities to release Pastor Nadarkhani, and demonstrate a commitment to basic, universal human rights, including freedom of religion. 

Permalink Reply by paul collings on October 1, 2011 at 11:30

Pastor Nadarkhani is a brave man, he must know that after being asked a third time to return to islam, that he risks death if he refuses.  I hope he is spared the death penalty. He should not be facing any criminal charges at all. and his case is not an isolated one, it is going on all the time. Would eveyone here post the names of everyone they know of, like Asia Bibi, so i can compile a list to send to william Hague so that he might speak out in defence of and bring to the attention of the various govenments, all the cases of people being persicuted for their non muslim beliefs.

 

It seems that the only reason the pastor is getting attention is because western govenments are pilling pressure on the iranian govenment over its nuclear programme, and not because of the injustice of the pastors case.  Noone should be imprisoned or put to death for not converting to or leaving a religion, weather they live in Iran, or pakistan or any other country, and our govenment should make that point loudley and publicly.

Permalink Reply by Kinana on October 1, 2011 at 14:23

from Robert Spencer

--

When Muhammad's words are not Islamic

This sounds great, right? A Muslim writing about the Yusef Nadarkhani case says that there is no Islamic justification for the death penalty for apostates. The only problem is that he doesn't even mention the fact that some Muslim authorities, contrary to his claims, do root the death penalty for apostasy in the Qur'an. Nor does he mention Muhammad's words about death to apostates.

Does he not know about this material? Or is he just being dishonest?

Islamic authorities generally base the death penalty for apostasy in two Qur'anic verses, 2:217 and 4:89. Here is 2:217:

They ask thee concerning fighting in the Prohibited Month. Say: "Fighting therein is a grave (offence); but graver is it in the sight of Allah to prevent access to the path of Allah, to deny Him, to prevent access to the Sacred Mosque, and drive out its members." Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter. Nor will they cease fighting you until they turn you back from your faith if they can. And if any of you turn back from their faith and die in unbelief, their works will bear no fruit in this life and in the Hereafter; they will be companions of the Fire and will abide therein.

What does it mean that the works of those who "turn back from their faith and die in unbelief" will "bear no fruit in this life" as well as in the next? Let's go for an answer to the Tafsir al-Qurtubi, a classic and thoroughly mainstream exegesis of the Qur'an. About 2:217, Qurtubi says this:

Scholars disagree about whether or not apostates are asked to repent. One group say that they are asked to repent and, if they do not, they are killed. Some say they are given an hour and others a month. Others say that they are asked to repent three times, and that is the view of Malik. Al-Hasan said they are asked a hundred times. It is also said that they are killed without being asked to repent.

Did you notice one option that Qurtubi never mentions? That's right: he never says anything like "some say the apostate should not be killed." The only point of contention seems to be how long the Muslim must wait before he kills the apostate.

Meanwhile, 4:89 says this:

They but wish that ye should reject Faith, as they do, and thus be on the same footing (as they). But take not friends from their ranks until they flee in the way of Allah (from what is forbidden). But if they turn renegades, seize them and slay them wherever ye find them; and (in any case) take no friends or helpers from their ranks.

Thus those who have fled from what is forbidden, i.e., embraced Islam, should be killed if they "turn renegades." The Tafsir al-Jalalayn, another venerable and respected commentary on the Qur'an, explains that a Muslim should not trust these people "until they emigrate in the way of God, a proper emigration that would confirm their belief" -- that is, if they leave their homes to join up with the Muslims. "Then, if they turn away, and remain upon their ways, take them, as captives, and slay them wherever you find them." Here again, no attempt is made, in this Qur'an commentary or any of those that Muslims revere as trustworthy, to explain that this does not actually mean that one should kill the "renegade."

Hasan focuses narrowly on the Qur'an. He never mentions, although he surely must know, that Muhammad said "Whoever changed his Islamic religion, then kill him" (Bukhari 9.84.57) and that this statement in the Hadith (in which it appears several times) became the foundation for the unanimous verdict of all the schools of Islamic jurisprudence: the apostate must be killed.

"This brutality is not Islam," by Mehdi Hasan in the Guardian, September 30 (thanks to Paul):

Permalink Reply by Kinana on October 1, 2011 at 14:24

my comment on Jihad Watch

This is what the Guardian readers want to hear.  So like a good Muslim, paving the way for more Muslim immigration, the non-Muslim population is again assured that Islam is a ‘religion of peace.’

As for his comment ‘The irony is that I have yet to come across an ordinary Muslim who agrees that a fellow believer who loses, changes or abandons his or her faith should be hanged.’

He must not get out very often.  He can easily wander around Hyde Park Speaker’s Corner on any Sunday afternoon or visit the East London Mosque to find such Muslims.  But then that would not fit into the picture he wants to paint for the larger Kafir society.

Permalink Reply by Kinana on October 1, 2011 at 14:24

the article from the Guardian:

This brutality is not Islam

 

by Mehdi Hasan in the Guardian, September 30

 

The death sentence given to Youcef Nadarkhani in Iran is an affront to universal moral values and a disservice to Muslims

 

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Islam’s holy book in the famous verse: ‘Let there be no compulsion in religion'.

 

In 1948, most of the world's Muslim-majority nations signed up to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, including article 18, "the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion" which includes, crucially, the "freedom to change his religion or belief". The then Pakistani foreign minister, Muhammad Zafarullah Khan, wrote: "Belief is a matter of conscience, and conscience cannot be compelled."

Fast-forward to 2011: 14 Muslim-majority nations make conversion away from Islam illegal; several – including Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Sudan – impose the death penalty on those who disbelieve. The self-styled Islamic Republic of Iran has sentenced to death by hanging a Christian pastor, born to Muslim parents, for ap.... At the time of writing, Youcef Nadarkhani, head of a network of Christian house churches in Iran, is on death row for refusing to recant and convert back to Islam.

The decision to execute Nadarkhani beggars belief. For a start, the sentence handed down by judges in the pastor's home city of Rasht a year ago, and affirmed by the country's supreme court in June, is in clear violation not just of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights but Iran's own constitution. Article 23 is crystal clear: "The investigation of individuals' beliefs is forbidden, and no one may be molested or taken to task simply for holding a certain belief."

Pleas for clemency from the archbishop of Canterbury, the UK's foreign secretary and Amnesty International, among others, have fallen on deaf ears in Tehran. Meanwhile the silence from the world's Muslims – especially the UK's usually voluble Muslim organisations and self-appointed "community leaders" – has been shameful. The irony is that I have yet to come across an ordinary Muslim who agrees that a fellow believer who loses, changes or abandons his or her faith should be hanged. Yet frustratingly few Muslims are willing to speak out against such medieval barbarism. We mumble excuses, avert our eyes.

There is a misguided assumption among many Muslims that such an abhorrent punishment is divinely mandated. It isn't. Classical Muslim jurists wrongly conflated apostasy with treason. The historical fact is that the prophet Muhammad never had anyone executed for apostasy alone. In one well-documented case, when a Bedouin man disowned his decision to convert to Islam and left the city of Medina, the prophet took no action against him, remarking only that, "Medina is like a pair of bellows: it expels its impurities and brightens and clears its good".

Nor does the Qur'an say that a Muslim who apostasises be given any penalty. Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Islam's holy book in the famous verse: "Let there be no compulsion in religion" (2:256). Apostasy is deemed a sin, but the Qur'an repeatedly refers to punishment in the next world, not this one. Take the 137th verse of chapter 4: "Those who believe then disbelieve, again believe and again disbelieve, then increase in disbelief, God will never forgive them nor guide them to the Way" (4:137). This verse, which explicitly allows for disbelief, followed by belief, followed once again by disbelief, suggests any punishment is for God to deliver – not judges in Iran, Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.

Interestingly, the judgment in the Nadarkhani case is based not on Qur'anic verses but the fatwas of various ayatollahs. Fatwas, however, differ. For example, the late Grand Ayatollah Hussein Ali Montazeri, a grand ayatollah and one-time heir apparent to Ayatollah Khomeini, argued that the death penalty for apostasy was originally prescribed to punish only political conspiracies against the nascent Islamic community; Montazeri believed Muslims today should be free to convert to another religion.

The decision to execute Nadarkhani, therefore, is both an affront to universal moral values and a disservice to the cause of Islam. There can be no freedom of religion without the freedom to leave or change one's religion. To try to control a person's mind and heart, their thoughts and beliefs, is the ultimate negation of individual freedom. It is totalitarianism, pure and simple.

It also doesn't work. Another late Iranian ayatollah, and high-profile ally of Khomeini, Murtaza Muttahari, once wrote of the sheer pointlessness of any and all measures to compel belief upon a Muslim (or ex-Muslim!), arguing that it was impossible to force anyone to hold the level of rationally inspired faith required by the religion of Islam. "It is not possible to spank a child into solving an arithmetical problem," proclaimed Muttahari. "His mind and thought must be left free in order that he may solve it. The Islamic faith is something of this kind." Muslims have to ask ourselves: Is the God we worship so weak and needy that he requires us to force our fellow humans to worship him? Is our religion so frail and insecure that it cannot tolerate any rejection whatsoever? And why are we silent as an innocent Christian is sentenced to death in the name of Islam? To hang a man for refusing to believe in Islam is theologically and morally unjustifiable; it is not just unIslamic but anti-Islamic.

Permalink Reply by Alan Lake on October 2, 2011 at 5:12

First the Christians, then the leftists. (In case you're wondering, they've already done the Gays).
I'm not gloating, I'm just observing.

Permalink Reply by Kinana on February 24, 2012 at 14:04

An update on the fate of this man's ongoing persecution and suffering:

 

Iranian Christian pastor to be hanged ‘immediately’

 

By Ed West

Thursday, 23 February 2012

Youcef Nadarkhani, the Iranian Christian pastor sentenced to death for apostacy, is to be hanged “imminently”, an American human rights group is reporting.

The American Center for Law and Justice has been informed by contacts inside the Islamic republic that an execution order has been issued for Mr Nadarkhani, who has refused to recant his Christian faith and return to Islam.

Jordan Sekulow, executive director for the American Center for Law and Justice, told American news site msnbc.com yesterday evening that “At this point, we can confirm that he is still alive,” but that “We know that the head of Iran’s judiciary, Ayatollah Sadegh Larijani, must approve publicly held executions, but only a small percentage of executions are held in public — most executions in Iran are conducted in secret,” he said. “We are calling on the Iranian government to release the pastor immediately.”

Mr Nadarkhani, a 34-year-old father of two, was arrested and sentenced to death in Iran’s northern city of Rasht in 2009.

An appeals court upheld his sentence last year after he refused to reconvert to Islam, after he had been given three chances to recant. A member of the Protestant evangelical Church of Iran, Mr Nadarkhani was never formally a Muslim but came from a Muslim background.

The sentence has been widely condemned around the world, by among others US president Barack Obama, British Foreign Secretary William Hague and Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams. In October the Iranian state media claimed that Nadarkhani is facing the death sentence for rape and extortion, not for apostasy and evangelism.

 

Permalink Reply by paul collings on February 25, 2012 at 15:17

So to all those that don't understand. To keep the peace you must be a muslim, or you must die. How wonderfully simple. If you wish to cause sane men to go berserk and start killing innocent people, (including yourself) then find away to insult Allah the one true god (unless you can prove theres another one) and mohhamad his last hobbit. Which shouldn't be hard, just say 'i'm not a muslim' and away they'll go spitting, cursing and killing till the sun goes down... And sometimes even later! depends if they gotta get a couple of prayer sessions in before bed.

 

Permalink Reply by Joe on March 4, 2012 at 10:56

He has been executed.  Strangled to death.

http://bluestarchronicles.com/2012/03/03/youcef-nadarkhani-executed...

Time for Terry Jones to get hold of his box of matches.  

Permalink Reply by Joe on March 4, 2012 at 11:01

Here we get the same old selective quoting from a muslim shill.  Mehdi Hasan is the same "socialist" who defended the jew-hating Jenny Tonge, who defended the right-wing homophobia of Baroness Warsi, who exculpated the would-be assassin of Stephen Timms.

The same liberal "socialist" who, when amongst muslims in Pakistan, described jews, christians and hindus as animals of no intelligence.

Kinana said:

the article from the Guardian:

This brutality is not Islam

 

by Mehdi Hasan in the Guardian, September 30

 

The death sentence given to Youcef Nadarkhani in Iran is an affront to universal moral values and a disservice to Muslims

 

Freedom of religion is guaranteed by Islam’s holy book in the famous verse: ‘Let there be no compulsion in religion'.

Permalink Reply by Antony on March 4, 2012 at 12:16

Mehdi Hasan attempts to tie in EDL with Breivik ; http://www.newstatesman.com/blogs/mehdi-hasan/2012/02/terrorism-thr...

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