....Because its the UN. They are the same people that put North Korea as head of the disarmament commitee.

Unfortunately Iran doesn't give a shit what the majority of the international community thinks. Petitions will go un-noticed and none of the western Governments will be able to sway the Iranian authorities in any way at all. I'm afraid that there is very little us international citizens can do to stop Iran.

United Arab Emirates (UAE), Singapore, Indonesia and Oman are the most influential countries financially for Iran. Syria and Venezuela are also up there. Then you have China and somewhat Europe.

I think it would take UAE, Singapore, Indonesia and Oman all saying something. If the Muslim countries condemned the execution it would send a strong message to Iran. However these countries are not about to do so because all of them have similar laws.

The US, U.K or almost every other western country is powerless , we already have so many sanctions against Iran nothing we do will deter them. There isn't a single country that is influential and allied with Iran that will stick up for religious rights. I think in the end if oppression is to end in Iran it will be by the bullet. Arab spring will have to come to Iran or NATO intervention or another country invading them. But until someone takes military action against Iran, or a Muslim country close to them stops being a hypocrite Iran will do as it pleases!

All we can do is pray for this poor man and admire his faith and the balls he has to speak up for what he believes. May he be an inspiration to us all!

The religion of peace.

I hate Sharia law. At least in its literal interpretation.

I'm glad that the Christians and Jews have by and large decided to ignore the more extreme statements in their holy books.

It would be interesting if more Christians actually engaged in turning the other cheek, loving their enemies,a nd so on.  Those extreme statements are in the holy book.

By extreme I meant the negative ones. To be fair the new testament doesn't have many but the old testament (which is closely related to the Torah) is full of things that would really be rather bad if implemented in real life. Mostly Leviticus and Deuteronomy, which contain some rather nasty things.

No it isn't. In fact, iranian law considers christians, jews etc. as "dhimmi", which basically means that they are members of a recognized and "protected" other religion and thus they have special rights etc.. For example, unlike muslims christians are allowed to eat pork, drink alcohol etc. (but maybe not in public). They have reserved seats in parliament etc.

The same is true for most monotheistic religions in Iran by the way. What many people for example don't know (because it doesn't quite fit with how Iran and Ahmadinejad are portrayed in western media) is that there is a vivid jewish community in Iran that is proud to be iranian. Iran has the largest number of jews in the whole middle east (excluding Israel of course), Tehran alone for example has 11 synagogues and one of only four jewish charity hospitals worldwide, and as unbelievable as it sounds, Ahmadinejad himself is donating money to it. And it's not like the iranian jews are suffering, in fact, prominent iranian jews have pointed out on several occations that they feel comfortable in Iran and that western reports about the bad situation of jews in Iran are mostly utter bullshit.

But back to topic: Iran has not executed any christian for religious reasons in over 20 years, and has already stated that Nadarkhani will not be executed for converting to christianity, even though this may be the intended punishment for this "crime" according to official iranian law.

It's a shame that Iran is portrayed so one-sided in western media. Binary solo's analysis of Iran is accurate: Iran is competeting with countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey about becoming the leading/most influential muslim country, and thus people like Ahmadinejad are actually very concerned about Iran's international reputation. It's ridiculous for example to believe that Iran would actually attack Israel or any other country with atomic bombs as soon as they have them.

Extreme is extreme, whether good or bad.  The initial comment is right about people ignoring the more extreme view of their religion.  That is human nature.  Usually most people go to religion to see what they get out of it.  It is the radicals who give their life for it, and that can be good or bad.  For Christians, to really be extreme, would end up producing saints.  Christians being ones who see the entire Bible through the New Testament texts, and its perspective.  What usually happens though is that marginal individuals get merged with political powers, and bring out the worst and most dark aspects of a religion.