ICC Note:
Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani continues to persevere despite threats made by the Iranian government that they will execute the pastor if he refuses to return Islam.
By Benjamin Weinthal
11/7/2011 Iran (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.
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 three attempts 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.”
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