Convert to Islam or face death, Iranian pastor told

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Yousef Nadarkhani
TORTURED FOR CHRIST: Yousef Nadarkhani with his wife and sons.
Yousef Nadarkhani
TORTURED FOR CHRIST: Yousef Nadarkhani with his wife and sons.

IMPRISONED Iranian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani is in trouble, big trouble.

The Iranian government has stepped up pressure on him to convert to Islam or face death, a Jerusalem Post report said quoting Fox News.

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.

According to the report, Iran’s security officials recently delivered a book on Islam to Nadarkhani. The book is entitled Beshaarat-eh Ahdein, meaning ‘Message of the Two Eras,’ referring to the New and Old Testaments. Through various narratives, the book claims Christianity is a fabrication and attempts to establish the superiority of Islam.

He is in prison Rasht on the Caspian Sea coast.

According to the report, the Iranian officials told “him they would be back to discuss the material and hear his opinion.”

The Jerusalem Post quoted David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy Jerusalem, as saying the new development is “very troubling.”

Parsons said there need to be “three attempts to make him convert to Islam before they can kill him.” He cited Shari’a Islamic law as the basis for the three attempts rule.

Parsons, a contributing editor to the Jerusalem Post Christian Edition, said: 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.”

Calling the case “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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Present Truth Ministries, which has campaigned since 2009 for Nadarkhani’s release and works to help persecuted Christians in the Middle East, said: “We cannot wait another moment, we have to contact our elected officials.”

Dr. Wahied Wahdat-Hagh, an authority on minority groups in the Islamic Republic of Iran, was quoted as telling the Post by phone from Berlin on Sunday that the book given to Nadarkhani, is “religious indoctrination.”

There is “no freedom of opinion or religion in Iran,” he said. The Iranian regime has been closing newspapers and “there is no freedom of conscience” in the Islamic Republic.

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