December
15, 2005, 8:38 a.m.
Iran's
Christians have a high price to pay.
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
On
Sundays after I return from transatlantic travels, I joke with
friends at church that Communion somehow becomes more meaningful
after a stay in "formerly Christian" Europe.
It's meant as a gentle rebuke, an admonition of one possible future
that could be ours should we bow too far to the secularists who would
ban expression of praise and thanksgiving from our societies.
The leaders of today's Islamic Republic of Iran, however, take their
religion very seriously. They resemble a dark chapter in Europe's
distant past - except that they are living it today, without
repentance.
A few weeks ago in Iran, an Iranian convert to Christianity was
kidnapped from his home in northeastern Iran and stabbed to death.
The vigilantes who took him tossed his bleeding body in front of his
home a few hours later, a stark warning against any who would follow
his example.
Within hours of the November 22 murder, secret police officers
arrived at the martyred pastor's home, searching for Bibles and other
banned Christian books he had been distributing in Persian
translations.
News of the martyrdom of pastor Ghorban Tori, 50, was broadcast by
Compass
Direct, a website dedicated
to bringing "news of Christians worldwide who are persecuted for
their faith." As I write this, no print or broadcast media in the
United States has bothered to report this.
According to their sources in Iran, representatives of the ministry
of information and security (MOIS), part of Iran's dreaded secret
police, have arrested and severely tortured ten other Christians in
several cities, including Tehran.
In addition, MOIS officials have reportedly visited known Christian
leaders since Tori's murder and have instructed them to warn
acquaintances in the secret "house churches" that "the government
knows what you are doing, and we will come for you soon."
Tori is the fifth Protestant pastor assassinated in Iran in the past
eleven years. Three of the five were former Muslims, making them
subject under Iranian law to the death penalty for having committed
apostasy.
Tori's murder came just days after Iran's new president, Mahmoud
Ahmadinejad, called an open meeting with the nation's 30 provincial
governors, and vowed to crack down on the burgeoning movement of
house churches across Iran.
"I will stop Christianity in this country," Ahmadinejad reportedly
said.
This is not the first time that the Islamic Republic authorities have
harassed, jailed, or murdered fellow Iranians because of their
faith.
Mina Nevisa, another convert from Islam, was forced to flee Iran in
the early 1980s after members of her house church were arrested,
tortured, and executed. Today, she and her husband are based in
northern Virginia, where they proselytize to the Muslim
community.
She tells the story of her escape from Iran in a powerful book,
Miracle
of Miracles, and
continues to work with house churches in Iran today.
Christians are not the only victims of religious persecution in
today's Iran. The State Department's latest report on International
Religious Freedom paints a devastating picture of religious
persecution that makes Torquemada's Spanish Inquisition look like a
liberal revival. Just a few highlights:
Iranian members of the Bahai faith, which began in the 1840s as
a reformist movement within Shia islam, are regularly arrested,
tortured, and jailed because of their beliefs. Since 1979, more than
10,000 Bahais have been dismissed from government and university
jobs. Bahais are not allowed to attend state-run universities. Over
the past eighteen months, Bahai holy sites and cemeteries have been
destroyed, community leaders arrested, and their property seized.
"The Government considers Bahais to be apostates," the report states.
Under Islamic sharia law, in force in Iran, apostasy is punishable by
death.
Numerous Sunni Muslim clerics have been killed in recent years.
Sunnis are routinely discriminated against when it comes to
government jobs, and are barred from running for president. As a sign
of this discrimination, "Sunnis cite the lack of a Sunni mosque in
Tehran, despite the presence of over 1 million adherents there," the
report states.
Iran's Jewish community has regularly been subject to
arbitrary arrests and collective punishment. More than three quarters
of the 80,000 Jews who lived in Iran before the Revolution have
fled.
Even Iran's Shiite Muslim clerics are under close supervision,
to ensure they do not deviate from the ruling orthodoxy. Former
Supreme Leader designate, Ayatollah Hossein Montazeri, remains under
house arrest after openly challenging regime leaders. Other dissident
Shiite clerics are routinely arrested and accused of "insulting
Islam" or "calling into question the Islamic foundation of the
Republic" if they dare to promote political reform.
Many Americans today believe that religious freedom means freedom
from religion. In today's Iran, religious freedom means keeping your
mouth shut and your heart sealed, and praying that government thugs
ignore you.
—
Kenneth R. Timmerman is executive director of the Foundation for
Democracy in Iran and author of Countdown to Crisis: the Coming
Nuclear Showdown with Iran.