![\"Flier\"](\"http:\/\/www.orthodoxnet.com\/archives\/2009\/Fr_Daniel_Sysoyev_2009-11.jpg\")
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RIA Novosti<\/a> | Nov. 20, 2009<\/p>\n A Russian Orthodox priest, Fr. Daniel Sysoyev, who carried out missionary work among immigrants from ex-Soviet republics, many of them Muslims, received over a dozen death threats before his murder on Thursday, a Russian paper said.<\/p>\n Fr. Daniel of St. Thomas Church in Moscow foresaw his death, writing in his internet diary<\/a> that he had received telephone threats from Muslims. Fr. Daniel’s evening ‘talks’ for inquirers included several especially designed for Muslims. <\/p>\n Daniel Sysoyev, 34, was shot dead by a masked gunman in St. Thomas Church in southern Moscow on Thursday evening. The killer entered the church, asked for Sysoyev by name, and opened fire with a pistol at close range. The priest was hit in the head and died later in hospital. His assistant was badly wounded in the attack.<\/p>\n “The main theory is that religious motives are behind the crime,” a spokesman for the investigating committee of the Prosecutor-General’s Office said in comments broadcast on the Rossiya state-run TV channel.<\/p>\n The Komsomolskaya Pravda paper said on Friday that Sysoyev had revealed in a recent interview with one of its journalists that he had received 14 death threats by phone and email.<\/p>\n “They’ve threatened to cut my head off 14 times,” the paper quoted the priest as saying. “The FSB [Federal Security Service] got in touch with me a year ago to say they had uncovered a murder plot against me.”<\/p>\n Sysoyev also told the paper that in the past year, his church had “christened 80 Muslims, among them Tatars, Uzbeks, Chechens and Dagestanis.”<\/p>\n He was also quoted as saying that other Orthodox priests were “afraid” to carry out missionary work among Muslim immigrants.<\/p>\n “They are afraid of revenge from the Muslim world,” he said.<\/p>\n Sysoyev also worked with people seeking to quit religious sects, and Russian State Duma MPs asked on Friday for more information on the groups involved.<\/p>\n . . . more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" RIA Novosti | Nov. 20, 2009 A Russian Orthodox priest, Fr. Daniel Sysoyev, who carried out missionary work among immigrants from ex-Soviet republics, many of them Muslims, received over a dozen death threats before his murder on Thursday, a Russian paper said. Fr. Daniel of St. Thomas Church in Moscow foresaw his death, writing in … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":497,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"generate_page_header":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[113,47,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-christian-persecution","category-islamic-violence","category-orthodox-christianity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/497"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3574"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3574\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.orthodoxytoday.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}