Christianity in Iran (VOA Persian)
Every Year Open Doors organization releases a list called "World Watch List" of the fifty countries to persecute Christians. In the list released in January 2012, Iran was placed fifth for the year of 2011 after respectively, North Korea, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. In the list of 2011 Iran was placed second the reason behind this improvement was refusing to execute the death penalty for converts in 2011. The criteria for ranking was based on the suppression of Christians because of their faith and did not take into account other political, economic, social and ethnic variables.
As reported by Mohabbat News, this organization has written, “Oppression of some religious minorities such as Christians and Bahai’s has increased since 2005. The Islamic Republic of Iran says that only ethnic Armenians and Assyrians are "Christian" and Persians are considered inherently Muslim. Therefore, the Iranian Christian converts or who are ethnically Persian, are innate apostates. This resulted in almost all activities such as preaching the gospel to teaching and publishing the Bible and Christian books to be banned in Farsi language.”
This Organization has claimed that: “The mistreating of the Islamic Government of Iran with the Christians has had reversed results and has helped with the spread of churches in this country.”
Article 225 of the new Penal Code, adopted in 1390, the Parliament and the Guardian Council, said that Iranian judicial authorities in accordance with Chapter 6 of about 6 verses in Qur'an, Hadith, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet and the Imams, that has been developed, categorizes apostasy or conversion of Muslims in 2 categories of "indigenous” and “national” apostasy and has established death penalty for the men and permanent imprisonment for the women who convert from Islam to any other religion.
Translated from: http://ir.voanews.com/content/iranian-converts-to-christianity-increase-house-churches-threat-islam/1246195.html
Picture from: http://cdn.ipetitions.com/user-images/petitions/objection-to-voa-persian/loz0oZbiRuWlx5csWgCR_VOA_FARSI_LIVESTATION-1.png
Every Year Open Doors organization releases a list called "World Watch List" of the fifty countries to persecute Christians. In the list released in January 2012, Iran was placed fifth for the year of 2011 after respectively, North Korea, Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia and Somalia. In the list of 2011 Iran was placed second the reason behind this improvement was refusing to execute the death penalty for converts in 2011. The criteria for ranking was based on the suppression of Christians because of their faith and did not take into account other political, economic, social and ethnic variables.
As reported by Mohabbat News, this organization has written, “Oppression of some religious minorities such as Christians and Bahai’s has increased since 2005. The Islamic Republic of Iran says that only ethnic Armenians and Assyrians are "Christian" and Persians are considered inherently Muslim. Therefore, the Iranian Christian converts or who are ethnically Persian, are innate apostates. This resulted in almost all activities such as preaching the gospel to teaching and publishing the Bible and Christian books to be banned in Farsi language.”
This Organization has claimed that: “The mistreating of the Islamic Government of Iran with the Christians has had reversed results and has helped with the spread of churches in this country.”
Article 225 of the new Penal Code, adopted in 1390, the Parliament and the Guardian Council, said that Iranian judicial authorities in accordance with Chapter 6 of about 6 verses in Qur'an, Hadith, the sayings and deeds of the Prophet and the Imams, that has been developed, categorizes apostasy or conversion of Muslims in 2 categories of "indigenous” and “national” apostasy and has established death penalty for the men and permanent imprisonment for the women who convert from Islam to any other religion.
Translated from: http://ir.voanews.com/content/iranian-converts-to-christianity-increase-house-churches-threat-islam/1246195.html
Picture from: http://cdn.ipetitions.com/user-images/petitions/objection-to-voa-persian/loz0oZbiRuWlx5csWgCR_VOA_FARSI_LIVESTATION-1.png