Its an offshoot in the same way Islam is an offshoot of Christianity. They claim that their prophet is the final incarnation of God's messanger with Abraham, Buddah, Jesus and Mohammed being prior prophets that spoke of him.

It's a pure tragedy when a government does not allow its people the freedom to believe and have a faith in what they want.

I admire the man's courage to choose to still have faith in his belief even when faced with death.

That truly says something about the individual.

The abandonment or renunciation of a religious or political belief, it is punishable by death in both the Bible and Qu'ran.

Believe it or not Iran does care about it's international reputation. When governments the UN and the international press have been openly critical of the way they persecute Baha'is they have toned down the persecution and reduced the anti-Baha'i propoaganda.

I think there is a very good chance that enough international outrage would cause the Iranian govt to commute the guy's death sentence. He'd probably still be imprisoned for life, or at until a moderate regime comes into power and releases all political and religious prisoners (don't hold your breath) which might still be life for this guy.

So actually it IS productive for people to loudly protest against both this guy's death sentence and the persecution of the Baha'is. First thing to do is write or e-mail your local congressman/senator/MP. Also write letters to the editor of the local news paper. If you live in a country with an Iranian embassy write to the Iranian Ambassador. Iran is a signatory to the international convention on Human Rights, every well publicised human rights violation is embarassing to them and it does cause them to act and moderate their behaviour (temporarily at least)

The University Students Association here is holding a debate on human rights in Iran and the Ambassador is coming to take part.

So please DO something.

So they're more receptive about this sort of thing than North Korea, then?

In what I have read of the Baha'i faith, I would consider the analogy being more like Baha'i is an offshoot of Islam, like Christianity would be of Judaism, in that both had the situation where they were awaiting the final one to come and set things right.  Reaction, as has been seen in Iran, was similarly negative to the claims of Jesus being the Messiah.

Muslims believe Muhammad is the final prophet. Baha'is believe Baha'u'llah is the latest, but there will never be a last one. The next one to come will be in about 1000 years according to what Baha'is believe. Baha'is believe in all the main prohets as being equal in divine authority.

Terrible. No-one should ever be put to death or have any legal trouble because of apostasy ever. I loathe theocracy.

Definitely. In fact Iran is quite sensitive to accusations of human rights abuses because they want the world to think they have good human rights. Iran sees itself as a leading and infuential nation in Middle East regional politics, or at least they want to be. While for the most part they dislike and distrust the wes they can completely dismiss western criticism because there are middle eastern countries who really want to get on with the west. Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Jordan particularly. So Iran can't afford to piss those guys off and hope to remain as a regional power. And now with Libya coming under the west's wing, and probably Egypt democratising and remaining friendly with the west (recall Egypt actually has a peace treaty with Israel) Iran's position is even more at risk if they isolate and reject the west too much.

So Iran is definitely much more open to being influenced by criticism of their human rights abuses than North Korea. North Korea only really cares about what China says, and even then they don't care that much.

Its illegal to be christian in Iran? Doesn't that go against human rights? Why doesn't UN do something about it?