Iran’s Idea of Human Rights: Persecute Christians

• “The government often uses it [the charge of ‘acting against national security’] against converts instead of the charge of apostasy... in an attempt to avoid international scrutiny.” — Morning Star News, July 13, 2017.

• Not only does Iran persecute its Christian minorities, but it also tries to coerce them to embrace Islam -- despite Rouhani’s boasts before the UN that “Iran does not seek to... impose its official religion on others...”

• “Rouhani wants to prove that he is a good Muslim by persecuting Christians....The authorities are trying to eradicate Christianity, just as the Islamic State group, but smarter.” — Iranian Christian living in hiding, BosNewsLife, September 7, 2017.

• “If a prisoner’s case got [international media] attention, they stopped torturing or raping them because they knew the world was watching....” — Mohabat News, October 23, 2017.

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In a speech before the United Nations on September 20, 2017, presumably as a way to support his claim that Israel is “a rogue and racist regime [that] trample[s] upon the most basic rights of the Palestinians,” Iranian President Hassan Rouhani repeatedly portrayed his government as dedicated to “moderation and respect for human rights,” adding:

One need only look to Iran’s Christians -- who form 1% of its entire population -- to test these claims. Unlike the persecution other Christian minorities experience in Muslim majority nations -- which often comes at the hands of Muslim individuals, mobs, or professional terrorists -- the primary driver of Christian persecution in Iran is the government itself. Iran is among the top ten worst nations where Christians experience “extreme persecution.” The 2018 World Watch List, compiled by Open Doors (a human rights organization that highlights the global persecution of Christians), makes this clear.

Whereas most persecution of Christians in the Arab Gulf region comes from society or radical Islamic groups, the main threat for believers in Iran comes from the government. The Iranian regime declares the country to be a Shia Islamic State and is constantly expanding its influence. Hardliners within the regime are vehemently opposed to Christianity, and create severe problems for Christians, particularly converts from Islam. Christians and other minorities are seen as threats to this end and are persecuted as a result. Iranian society as a whole is more tolerant than their leadership, thanks in part due to the influence of moderate and mystical Sufi Islam.

Most of the Iranian regime’s persecution seems directed against Protestant Christians and Muslim converts to branches of Christianity, such as the Evangelical, Baptist, and Pentecostal strains. Because they are denied the right to build churches, Christians often resort to meeting and worshipping in secret. Reports of Iranian authorities breaking into such house-church gatherings, arresting and hauling off many, if not all, present Christians, have become increasingly common.

Discussing this trend, Middle East Concern (another human rights organization) says:

In June 2017, for example, four Muslim converts to Christianity, who were arrested a month earlier in raids on house-churches, were each sentenced to 10 years in prison: Most recently, another convert to Christianity, Naser Navard Gol-Tapeh, inquired about the charge for which he was convicted: “Action against national security through the establishment of house churches.” In an August 2018 open letter to the Iranian court that sentenced him to ten years in prison, he asked: Although the official reason Iranian authorities give in all these arrests and convictions is that such Christian activities are tantamount to “crimes against national security,” it seems that the real reason is hostility to religions other than Iran’s indigenous religious denominations. For instance, "[w]hile the government is anti-Christian, it does grant some limited freedoms to historical [non-Protestant] Christian churches,” according to the World Watch List. Even historical, indigenous churches are targeted for destruction by Iranian authorities.
Not only does Iran persecute its Christian minorities, but it also tries to coerce them to embrace Islam -- despite Rouhani’s boasts before the UN that “Iran does not seek to... impose its official religion on others,” because "[w]e are so confident in the depth of our culture, the truth of our faith and tenacity and longevity of our revolution...” In one instance, the government “ordered children belonging to families of one of the country’s largest house-church movements to study the Koran and Shi’a Islamic teachings or face expulsion from school,” notes one report. The policy “deprives Christian children of primary and secondary education unless they agree to religious instruction that does not conform to their faith.” As one Iranian Christian living in hiding had explained: Many Christians who eventually escape Iran and its prisons make clear that pressuring them to convert to Islam was a standard tactic. An October 2017 report says that it had “obtained confirmed reports of them being beaten in prison and threatened that if they don’t renounce their faith in Christ and turn away from their Christian faith, they will be forced to leave the country or be beaten to death.” Similarly, while recounting their experiences in Iran’s jail system, two female converts to Christianity said“they were asked repeatedly to deny their Christian faith,” and “were denied medical treatment because of their faith and that they were seen as ‘dirty infidels.’”

“We can do anything to you and nobody can stop us,” their Islamic interrogators regularly informed them. “Here we are the law and we can do whatever we want.... If you don’t give us the information we need, we’ll beat you till you vomit blood...”

“They treated us like animals,” recalled the women.

The irony is that Rouhani himself hints that Iran’s commitment to human rights does not include non-Muslims. At one point in his UN speech, he said that “Human and citizens’ rights, along with the quest for justice and Islamic values, have constituted the most pivotal demands of the Iranian people ... particularly in the Islamic Revolution of 1979.” Evidently, any Iranian who has “Christian values” does not count. Elsewhere, Rouhani said: Why did Rouhani stress “Muslims”? Why not say “all people” in Syria, Iraq, etc.? Again, apparently the “misery” of non-Muslims who live in those countries does not warrant mention. Until such time that Iran can show that it cares about the human rights of all -- including non-Muslims who live within its borders -- all lofty talk about rights and Palestinians must be seen for what it is: hypocrisy, lies and a political agenda.

Raymond Ibrahim, author of the new book, Sword and Scimitar, Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, is a Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Gatestone Institute and a Judith Rosen Friedman Fellow at the Middle East Forum.