Catholic actor Jim Caviezel, famous for playing Jesus Christ in The Passion of the Christ, announced that Muslims want to kill him because he has spoken the truth about Islam and Sharia Law.
“I have a fatwa on me,” Caviezel told podcast host Benny Johnson. “They have a right to cut my heart out in their islamic belief because I exposed them in a movie called The Stoning of Soraya M.”
The 2009 film told the story about the sham trial and execution by stoning of an Iranian woman whose husband had grown tired of her.
Caviezel spoke about the fatwa against him during a discussion about the Islamicization of the United States.
“You might not know what Sharia Law is,” said the actor, “but you’re going to know what it is very, very soon.”
He also warned against dismissing stories about the dark, inhuman side of radical Islam and its intent to overtake America as nothing more than “conspiracy theories.”
Caviezel argued that “Christians today are more afraid of the devil than they are of God. They should be terrified of God, but they’re afraid of the devil.”
“I can’t live that way,” he declared. “I’m not going to be a slave under that guy.”
Radical Islamists famously issued a fatwa against writer Salman Rushdie, forcing him into seclusion and requiring round-the-clock protection for years.
Publication of his 1988 novel The Satanic Verses quickly provoked outrage and violence among Muslims.
In 1989, the Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa calling for the death of Rushdie and his publishers. William Kilpatrick recounted what happened next:
Shortly after, Iranian officials offered a $6 million reward for killing Rushdie. Although Rushdie himself benefited from police protection, others were not so lucky. The Japanese translator of the book was killed on July 11, 1991. The Italian translator was seriously injured in a stabbing attack on July 3, 1991. And the publisher of the Norwegian edition barely survived an attempted assassination in 1993. It’s also likely that the Turkish translator of the book was the intended target when a mob set fire to the Hotel Madmak in Sivas, Turkey. The 1993 massacre resulted in 37 deaths.
“So much of the time now, we think of the Gospels and say, ‘Wasn’t it great that they did that for us, we don’t have to do that now.’ So suffering plays no part of our Christianity, it was just ‘those guys back then.’ It’s not true. It’s in everyday life,” Caviezel told Christianity Today following the 2009 release of The Stoning of Soraya M.
“Where are we going to stand? What choice are we going to make?” he asked. “Are we going to be cowards?”
Earlier this week, Caviezel called out popes, prelates, and clergy members for offering only a watered down version of the Gospel because “they are afraid.”
In his bold declaration he did not exclude Pope Leo XIV.
“Many pastors and priests, bishops and popes,” said Caviezel, have “watered down” the Gospel.
“They’re afraid of the Gospel,” he declared.