The owner of a Christian bookstore in the Gaza Strip who was found dead this weekend was publicly beaten by Islamic gunmen accusing him of spreading Christianity, witnesses and Palestinian Arab security officials said.

The body of Rami Ayyad, director of Gaza’s only Christian bookstore, was found Sunday riddled with gunshot and stab wounds. He had been abducted the night before as he closed his shop, a local Christian group said.

Gaza-based Islamic groups had accused Ayyad, a Baptist, of engaging in missionary activity. His bookstore was firebombed in April, and since then Ayyad had told relatives he was receiving death threats from Islamists.

The day before his abduction, Ayyad said he was being followed by a car with no license plates.

Witnesses and security officials associated with Hamas’s so-called Executive Force told The New York Sun that Ayyad was publicly beaten a few blocks from his store before being shot to death.

The witnesses said they saw three armed men, two of them wearing masks, beat Ayyad repeatedly with clubs and the butts of their guns while accusing him of attempting to spread Christianity in Gaza. The witnesses said that after the three men beat Ayyad, they all shot him.

Hamas security sources said Ayyad’s body showed signs of torture. He leaves a pregnant wife and two young children. No group has taken responsibility for the attack.

Sheik Abu Saqer, the leader of an Islamic outreach movement that said recently it formed a military wing to enforce Muslim law in Gaza, Jihadia Salafiya, told the Sun that though his group “didn’t carry out the Ayyad attack,” all Christians engaging in missionary activity in Gaza would be “dealt with harshly.”

Sheik Saqer’s group was accused of firebombing Ayyad’s bookstore in April. Jihadia Salafiya also is suspected of firebombing of Internet cafes and an attack in May on a U.N. school in Gaza after it allowed boys and girls to participate in the same sporting event.

In June, Hamas seized control of Gaza from Fatah — the party of the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas — amid widespread fears that hard-line Islamic rule would be imposed in the territory and life for Christians there would deteriorate.

About 3,000 Christians live in Gaza, which has a population of more than 1 million.

Now that Hamas is in power, Sheik Saqer said, Christians can continue to live safely in Gaza only if they accept Islamic law, including a ban on alcohol and on women appearing in public without proper head coverings.

Since June, “the situation has changed 180 degrees in Gaza,” he said. “Jihadia Salafiya and other Islamic movements will ensure Christian schools and institutions show publicly what they are teaching to be sure they are not carrying out missionary activity. No more alcohol on the streets. All women, including non-Muslims, need to understand they must be covered at all times while in public.”

“Also, the activities of Internet cafes, pool halls, and bars must be stopped,” he added. “If it goes on, we’ll attack these things very harshly.”

Sheik Saqer said Gaza Christian community’s leadership was “proselytizing and trying to convert Muslims with funding from American evangelicals.”

“This missionary activity is endangering the entire Christian community in Gaza,” he said. There is “no need” for Christians in Gaza to maintain a large number of institutions in the territory, he added. Hamas “must work to impose an Islamic rule or it will lose the authority it has and the will of the people.”

The head of Hamas in Gaza and a former Palestinian Arab foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, responded to fears that the group could impose hard-line Islamic rule by saying: “I hardly understand the point of view of the West concerning these issues. The West brought all this freedom to its people, but it is that freedom that has brought about the death of morality in the West. It’s what led to phenomena like homosexuality, homelessness and AIDS.”