Iran is known for its human rights abuses and harsh treatment of Christians, whom it claims to be “’threatening national security,’ either for converting people or for attending house churches.” All the while, UN “experts” and spokespersons pay lip service to Iran’s human rights abuses, but take no action. If it ever took Muslim persecution of Christians seriously, the UN would have its hands full. Over 200 million Christians worldwide are facing severe persecution, and 12 out of 14 of the top persecuting countries are Muslim countries. No significant efforts are ever made by the UN on their behalf, which is not surprising, given the power of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) at the UN.
In 2016, the Assistant Secretary-General for Political Affairs for the UN, Miroslav Jenca, told the UN Security Council that “we need to join forces with the Organization of Islamic Cooperation, to devise joint strategies.” The UN has long been working closely with the OIC, which does not ascribe to the UN Declaration of Human Rights, but instead to the Cairo Declaration of Human Rights, which says that all human rights derive from the Sharia. It is no wonder that the ongoing jihad genocide against Christians in the Middle East is being disregarded by the UN, as well as efforts to defend Christian rights and freedoms.
At the end of January, Pastor Victor Bet Tamraz’s wife, Shamiram Isavi, was also sentenced to five years in prison for “acting against national security.”
We can only hope that other human rights groups and Christian watchdogs will continue to advocate stridently on behalf of Victor Bet Tamraz, Shamiram Isavi, Amin Afshar Naderi, and Hadi Asgari.
“Iranian Christians Appeal Convictions By Islamic Court”, Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, February 4, 2018:
Three Iranian Christians are due to appear before Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Court on February 4 to appeal against their 2017 convictions on charges of “conducting evangelism” and carrying out “illegal church activities.”
Pastor Victor Bet Tamraz, Amin Afshar Naderi, and Hadi Asgari each received a provisional sentence of 10 years in prison for the charges filed against them.
The Islamic judges also imposed an additional five-year prison sentence against Naderi on a charge of blasphemy.
The Revolutionary Court has the power to end the case, confirm the sentences, or refer the case to Iran’s Supreme Court.
Iran’s secretive Revolutionary Court system was established after the 1979 Islamic Revolution to try suspected ideological opponents of the country’s Islamic rulers.
It operates without juries, without defense lawyers, and often without evidence except confessions extracted through torture.
The court system’s case load includes suspects charged with espionage, threatening the internal and external security of Iran, trying to overthrow Iran’s Islamic government, blasphemy, inciting violence, and drug smuggling.
On February 2, four UN human rights experts issued a joint statement calling on Iran to ensure “a fair and transparent final hearing” for the three men.
The UN special rapporteurs said the charges and sentences were “completely contrary” to Iran’s obligations under international law.
“We are additionally concerned about the lack of health care made available to them while in detention and, in particular, about the current health condition of Mr. Asgari, who remains in prison,” they said.
The UN experts also said they were concerned that the prosecution of the three Christians was not an isolated case.
They called on Iran to “ensure fair trials for all, including the religious minorities in the country.”
“We are aware of several other reported cases in which members of the Christian minority have received heavy sentences after being charged with ‘threatening national security,’ either for converting people or for attending house churches,” their joint statement said.
“This shows a disturbing pattern of individuals being targeted because of their religion or beliefs, in this case a religious minority in the country,” they said.
“Members of the Christian minority in Iran, particularly those who have converted to the faith, are facing severe discrimination and religious persecution,” the UN experts said.
The UN experts also urged Iran’s government to “immediately and unconditionally release all those who have been arrested and detained for exercising their right to freedom of religion or belief.”….
CRUSADER says
Bless the Christians!
ACT for America’s Brigitte Gabriel witnessed firsthand what became of Christians in Lebanon,
which prompted her furtherance of her concern into Action….
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Graven Image of Brigitte Gabriel , an artistic homage to Counter Jihad
http://photobucket.com/gallery/user/gravenimageartist/media/bWVkaWFJZDoyMTExNTk3OQ==/?ref=1
Graven Image has this remark by the incomparable Brigitte Gabriel (ACT for America)
written on the art piece, part of “Heroes Against Jihad” presentation:
” Even after 9/11 there are those who say that we must engage our terrorist enemies, that we must address their grievances. Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our freedom of speech. Their grievance is our democratic process … (Islamic religious authorities and terrorist leaders repeatedly state that they will destroy the United States and Western civilization, and replace it with the only true religion: Islam. Unless we take them at their word, and defend ourselves, they will succeed….)”
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Brigitte Gabriel’s Duke University Speech
Brigitte GabrielWe gather here today to share information and knowledge. Intelligence is not merely cold hard data about numerical strength or armament or disposition of military forces. The most important element of intelligence has to be understanding the mindset and intention of the enemy. The West has been wallowing in a state of ignorance and denial for thirty years as Muslim extremists have perpetrated evil against innocent victims in the name of Allah.
I was ten years old when my home exploded around me, burying me under the rubble and leaving me to drink my blood to survive, as the perpetrators shouted, “Allah Akbar!” My only crime was that I was a Christian living in a Christian town. At 10 years old, I learned the meaning of the word “infidel.”
I had a crash course in survival. Not in the Girl Scouts, but in a bomb shelter where I lived for seven years in pitch darkness, freezing cold, drinking stale water and eating grass to live. At the age of 13, I dressed in my burial clothes going to bed at night, waiting to be slaughtered. By the age of 20, I had buried most of my friends — killed by Muslims. We were not Americans living in New York, or Britons in London. We were Arab Christians living in Lebanon.
As a victim of Islamic terror, I was amazed when I saw Americans waking up on September 12, 2001, and asking themselves, “Why do they hate us?” The psychoanalyst experts were coming up with all sort of excuses as to what did we do to offend the Muslim World. But if America and the West were paying attention to the Middle East, they would not have had to ask the question. Simply put, they hate us because we are defined in their eyes by one simple word: “infidels.”
Under the banner of Islam “la, ilaha illa Allah, muhammad rasoulu Allah” (None is god except Allah; Muhammad is the Messenger of Allah), they murdered Jewish children in Israel, massacred Christians in Lebanon, killed Copts in Egypt, Assyrians in Syria, Hindus in India, and expelled almost 900,000 Jews from Muslim lands. We Middle Eastern infidels paid the price then. Now infidels worldwide are paying the price for indifference and shortsightedness.
Tolerating evil is a crime. Appeasing murderers doesn’t buy protection. It earns one disrespect and loathing in the enemy’s eyes. Yet apathy is the weapon by which the West is committing suicide. Political correctness forms the shackles around our ankles, by which Islamists are leading us to our demise.
America and the West are doomed to failure in this war unless they stand up and identify the real enemy: Islam. You hear about Cahaba and Salafi Islam as the only extreme form of Islam. All the other Muslims, supposedly, are wonderful moderates. Closer to the truth are the pictures of the irrational eruption of violence in reaction to the cartoons of Mohammed printed by a Danish newspaper. From burning embassies, to calls to butcher those who mock Islam, to warnings that the West be prepared for another holocaust, those pictures have given us a glimpse into the real face of the enemy. News pictures and video of these events represent a canvas of hate decorated by different nationalities who share one common ideology of hate, bigotry and intolerance derived from one source: authentic Islam. An Islam that is awakening from centuries of slumber to re-ignite its wrath against the infidel and dominate the world. An Islam which has declared “Intifada” on the West.
America and the West can no longer afford to lay in their lazy state of overweight ignorance. The consequences of this mental disease are starting to attack the body; and if they don’t take the necessary steps now to control it, death will be knocking soon. If you want to understand the nature of the enemy we face, visualize a tapestry of snakes. They slither and they hiss, and they would eat each other alive, but they will unite in a hideous mass to achieve their common goal of imposing Islam on the world.
This is the ugly face of the enemy we are fighting. We are fighting a powerful ideology that is capable of altering basic human instincts. An ideology that can turn a mother into a launching pad of death. A perfect example is a recently elected Hamas official in the Palestinian Territories who raves in heavenly joy about sending her three sons to death and offering the ones who are still alive for the cause. It is an ideology that is capable of offering highly educated individuals such as doctors and lawyers far more joy in attaining death than any respect and stature life in society is ever capable of giving them.
The United States has been a prime target for radical Islamic hatred and terror. Every Friday, mosques in the Middle East ring with shrill prayers and monotonous chants calling death, destruction and damnation down on America and its people. The radical Islamist deeds have been as vile as their words. Since the Iran hostage crisis, more than three thousand Americans have died in a terror campaign almost unprecedented in its calculated cruelty along with thousands of other citizens worldwide. Even the Nazis did not turn their own children into human bombs, and then rejoice at their deaths as well as the deaths of their victims. This intentional, indiscriminate and wholesale murder of innocent American citizens is justified and glorified in the name of Islam.
America cannot effectively defend itself in this war unless and until the American people understand the nature of the enemy that we face. Even after 9/11 there are those who say that we must engage our terrorist enemies, that we must address their grievances. Their grievance is our freedom of religion. Their grievance is our freedom of speech. Their grievance is our democratic process where the rule of law comes from the voices of many, not that of just one prophet. It is the respect we instill in our children towards all religions. It is the equality we grant each other as human beings, sharing a planet and striving to make the world a better place for all humanity. Their grievance is the kindness and respect a man shows a woman, the justice we practice as equals under the law, and the mercy we grant our enemy. Their grievances cannot be answered by an apology for who or what we are.
Our mediocre attitude of not confronting Islamic forces of bigotry and hatred, wherever they raised their ugly heads in the last 30 years, has empowered and strengthened our enemy to launch a full scale attack on the very freedoms we cherish in their effort to impose their values and way of life on our civilization.
If we don’t wake up and challenge our Muslim community to take action against the terrorists within it, if we don’t believe in ourselves as Americans and in the standards we should hold every patriotic American to, we are going to pay a price for our delusion. For the sake of our children and our country, we must wake up and take action. In the face of a torrent of hateful invective and terrorist murder, America’s learning curve since the Iran hostage crisis is so shallow that it is almost flat. The longer we lay supine, the more difficult it will be to stand erect.
http://www.tedmontgomery.com/remarks/10.7-12/BrigitteGabriel/speech.html
gravenimage says
Thanks for that post, CRUSADER.
Ibrahim itace muhammed says
Mithraist Christian evangelism means lies , blackmails and nastiness against Islam that could provoke breach of peace. Iran is right to ban It.
Lydia Church says
No, God is right to ban pagan islam!
As we see in the Bible. (all false religions banned)
And in that case we need to ban islam all over the world (on the same note).
Because that is the one guilty of terrorism and mithraism, not Christianity.
A lack of peace is brought in along with islam, but a lack of islam brings peace.
CRUSADER says
CAUTION: this could catch on!!!!
‘Death to you’ = (as-samu alaykum)
AWESOME Greeting To A Muslim Jerk!
Note the similarity to the usual “greeting”
gravenimage says
The appalling Ibrahim itace muhammed wrote:
Mithraist Christian evangelism means lies , blackmails and nastiness against Islam that could provoke breach of peace. Iran is right to ban It.
………………………….
These Chirstians are entirely peaceful, yet Ibrahim itaqce muhammed considers their non-violent preaching to “provoke breach of peace”. He is, however, fine with Muslims raping and slaughtering their victims in the streets.
And he has used the odd term “blackmails” before to indicate telling the truth about Islam’s violence.
MFritz says
Don’t feed the troll.
Walter Sieruk says
The Christian author, William Wagner,, in his book which is entitled HOW ISLAM PLANS TO CHANGE THE WORLD had explained on page 155 about a meeting that he had with a Muslim cleric , which reads “Several years ago one Imam told me that ,prior to 1990, the greatest enemy to Islam was Communism but now it is the Christian missions.” Further, on page 208 the Wagner had written about some zealous Muslims that “They have failed to stop Christian missions. They see Christian missions as their number one enemy.” On the very next page the reader is informed that “Christianity remains the number one buffer against Islam, a fact readily recognized by those who seek a world wild ummah.” [1]
Ummah – The community of all those who affirm Islam.
Furthermore,there are many Muslims who strongly dislike Christians. Some Muslims even hate Christians so much that they even become violence against them and burn their Bibles. One reason for this is that in the mosques and madrasas the Muslim clerics, as the mullahs of Iran who speak many awful and unproven terrible things against Christians and Christian doctrine. So much so the many Muslims get all worked up against Christians and Christian teachings and some those Muslims commit violent actions against Christians. Such false religious teachers, as those Muslim clerics, who speak to people unfounded and invalid evil things about Christians and Christian doctrines have been described in the Bible. For the Bible informs the reader in Second Peter 2:12. “They speak evil of things they do not understand, and will utterly perish in their own corruption.” [N.K.J.V.]
It also should be make clear that in this specific above Bible verse, as well as in John 3:16. The word “Perish” does not mean loss of being but loss of well-being. As in going to ruin by ending up in languishing in torment in a terrible place of suffering that the Bible calls hell. Luke 16:19-31.
CRUSADER says
Well, of course….
The question now is, what are you prepared to do to counter-act this?
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It’s time to ACT!
Form an action team in your area based on :
http://www.ACTforAmerica.org/Issues
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mortimer says
One of the most IMPORTANT of actions in Christianity is known as THE GREAT COMMISSION (look it up) which every Christian is obligated to do.
These pastors are merely PRACTICING CHRISTIANITY.
Lydia Church says
If you are a true Christian, living by the Bible in Iran, you will be persecuted.
Part of the Christian faith involves evangelism so we must do it.
Of course, Jesus did tell us that we would be persecuted, so it is no surprise.
CRUSADER says
The way is narrow and straight.
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DEUS VULT
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gravenimage says
Islamic Republic of Iran: Christians appeal convictions for “conducting evangelism”
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Appalling–but this is what Islam does.
Where is “Christianblood” to tell us that Iran does not oppress Christians?
MFritz says
If the West would support the Iranian opposition there would be a proper revolution. Whereas only critisising the murderers in charge there doesn’t help.