In the years that I’ve been in Picture Atlantic, I have, at certain times, used the blog/facebook/whatever to post about things outside of our music in relation to politics, faith and social activism. I try to keep that to an utter bare minimum if I can, as this band is it’s own cloud, and I don’t intend to hijack it to rant and rave to an audience. I have never felt I was called to make this band some “christian” unit, and ultimately our goal as a group is purely to pursue music with all the integrity we can muster. I have however, strategically chosen to post something I deem to be of importance.

Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani, of Iran, faces execution because he converted to Christianity from Islam. Under Islamic Apostasy laws, Pastor Yousef can be condemned to die by the Iranian Judiciary, and in fact has been condemned to die at any point from today onwards.

How you can help: http://dynamic.csw.org.uk/article.asp?t=news&id=1067

This link above is to a great website called Christian Solidarity Watch, and they have a webpage set up to make it as easy as possible to write the Iranian Ambassador here in the US about this. It takes about 5 minutes of your time, and may do a great deal of good. Already 27,000 people have written embassies all over the world. In this age we are cynical of our ability to sway politicians with mass appeals or mass letter writings, but in actuality our very cynicism and apathy fuels the cases wherein that action doesn’t work. I would urge you, if you are reading this, to take some time to write your appeal to the Iranian Ambassador (respectfully please) and ask him to urge his government in Iran to pardon this man and save his life. I could go on about all the international and Iranian constitutional laws that are being broken here, but I will simply argue my point in that there is an innocent life about to be lost because of a choice of faith.

Thank you for your time,

-Nik