Iran: Become a Christian – You have Chosen Execution

John R. Houk

© September 29, 2011

Youcef (or Yosef) Nadarkhani is a Christian Pastor of a House Church in Shia-Psycho Iran. After a couple years of torture and isolation Pastor Nadarkhani has refused to renounce his Christian faith to become a Muslim. An Iranian Court determined that Pastor Nadarkhani was a Muslim by birth because his parents are Muslims. Because of that Iranian adjudication Pastor Nadarkhani has been sentence to death by hanging for apostasy. Apostasy is a capital offense in most Muslim nations and is especially the case of the Mullah ruled Iran.

Here is an excerpt from a post that I used to answer an Iranian critic about the persecution of Christians in Iran:

Yosef Nadarkhani is scheduled for execution after appeals process has gone full circle:

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 age19, 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.

To Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, Nadarkhani’s attorney, the Iranian court decision came as a surprise as only one month ago he had been under the impression that his client’s appeal had been granted. Instead, Nadarkhani now stands to be the first Iranian Christian executed for apostasy since 1990. (Iran’s Christian Shutdown, by Frank Crimi, FrontPageMag.com, July 19, 2011)

I have to say Amin, Iran is not friendly to anyone who is a non-Muslim.

Today it was rumored that Pastor Nadarkhani was about to receive a stay of execution from Iran; however also on this same day Nadarkhani’s lawyer Mohammad Ali Dadkhah has said the stay of execution was a lie. Perhaps the reason for the lie is because the Iranian secret police is attempting to downplay the execution to the Iranian public and to Western media to draw attention away from Nadarkhani. Executions occur unannounced in Iran and sometime are not reported at all. If Attorney Dadkhah is correct an execution could come at anytime from now through several weeks and the public would not hear of it or some Iranian yarn could be weaved to procure a deceptive picture of Nadarkhani’s demise for being a Christian.

Here is the full account of Nadarkhani’s plight with the Iranian government by simply adhering to another religion other than Islam.

JRH 9/29/11