Conversion, Islam Style: 3 Tortured To Death

I read this report in Middle East Times and all I can think is that it was a failed attempt at converting Christians to Islam:

MALATYA, Turkey -- Three Protestants murdered at a Christian publishing house in Malatya, Turkey, were tortured for three hours before their assailants slit their throats, a press report said Friday, quoting one of the doctors involved in the grisly case.

Dr. Murat Ugras, a spokesman for the Turgut Ozal Medical center, told the daily Hurriyet of hospital surgeons' fruitless efforts to save Ugur Yuksel, one of the three victims of the massacre at the Zirve (summit) publishing house, which distributed Christian literature.

"He had scores of knife cuts on his thighs, his testicles, his rectum, and his back," Ugras said. "His fingers were sliced to the bone.

"It is obvious that these wounds had been inflicted to torture him," he said.

The two others who were killed, Necati Aydin, pastor of Malatya's tiny Protestant community, and German Tilmann Geske, a Malatya resident with his wife and three children since 2003, were also tortured, press reports said.

The abuse lasted for three hours as the five men detained at the crime scene interrogated the three on their missionary activities, they said.

The last paragraph is obviously wrong; they were not interrogating the men because of their missionary activities. We know this because the report also states that one of the members of the murderous Islamic gang "had made several visits beforehand to the publishing house to gain the confidence of the people working there."

Rather, the murders probably started by demanding them to stop spreading the Word, then, as the Christians refused despite torture, the Islamists heightened their demands: Denounce Christ, accept Islam, or die.

The three obviously refused.

I was alerted to this story first by friends who are missionaries in Turkey who sent a quick email to say not to worry, they are safe. Not to worry?!

This couple, with their two young children, embody the Christian approach to persuading people to Christ. The husband works in health care, spending his days bringing medical care to people, and the wife befriends the women in their apartment building and the shopkeepers in the market.

They invite conversations about faith, and when there is a reciprocal interest, they move the conversation gently along. It's all done subtly in part out of an understanding of the obvious risks of being a missionary in even a secular Islmaic state, and also because that is how the Bible teaches to evangelize.

Contrast that to the evangelistic sword of Islam, the "covert or die" that swept out of Saudi Arabia and across an unfortunate belt of the planet, and if you are the praying sort, say a prayer for my friend, his family and all the missionaries to the Muslims.