Miss Phillips has one thing wrong – the protests coming from the White House and Foggy Bottom (Hillary Clinton has been particularly disappointing as Secretary of State leading me to think she would have been marginally better as president then Obama) have been tepid and fairly muted. The true barbarity of the Iranian regime is manifest to all but the most parochial of Islamofascist apologists. Now the Mullahs are claiming that Pastor Nadarkhani is a rapist! Too bad all those folks getting worked up over the “siege of Gaza” cannot say one word over the coming judicial murder of Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani. As a commenter wrote “A Christian martyr dies for his/her beliefs, a Muslim martyr kills other people for his”.
by Melanie Phillips
The brutal regime in Iran continues to inflict appalling levels of barbarity upon its own citizens.
A Christian pastor, Youcef Nadarkhani, aged 35 and the father of two children, has been sentenced to death for apostasy, a crime for which he was jailed two years ago. But this savage punishment is far worse even than it seems. For Nadarkhani is deemed to have committed apostasy merely because he has Islamic ancestry. Whether he was ever actually a practising Muslim was not even established. The Washington Post reported:
‘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.
[…]
Now the Iranian authorities have claimed he is to be executed not for apostasy at all but for a slew of other crimes. As CNN reports:
‘Gholomali Rezvani, the deputy governor of Gilan province, where Nadarkhani was tried and convicted, accused Western media of twisting the real story, referring to him as a “rapist.” A previous report from the news agency claimed he had committed several violent crimes, including repeated rape and extortion. “His crime is not, as some claim, converting others to Christianity,” Rezvani told Fars. “He is guilty of security-related crimes.”
[…]
‘… “No one is executed in Iran for their choice of religion,” [Rezvani] added. “He is a Zionist and has committed security-related crimes.”
It is obvious that, faced with mounting outrage around the world – there have been protests from the White House, for example — the Iranian regime has resorted to trumping up spurious accusations against a man they are persecuting on account of his Christian faith. By seeking to deny the verdict of apostasy that was handed down two years ago, they are trying to conceal above all that Pastor Nadarkhani has been imprisoned for two years and is sentenced to hang because of an Islamic religious precept.
In other words, this barbarism is yet another religious crime being perpetrated by the regime against an Iranian citizen for no reason other than he has transgressed the laws of Islam enforced by a fanatical regime of religious zealots.
[…]
Read the rest: Where are the protests over Pastor Nadarkhani?
Tags: Melanie Phillips
