“Imprisoned Iranian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has gone on a hunger strike to protest the regime’s attempt to bar his children from completing their education because they refuse to study Islam and read the Quran…..The policy requires all students to take a course on the Quran.”
Nadarkhani’s suffering as an apostate highlights the lack of human rights for Christians and religious minorities in Shia Iran.
“Nadarkhani was first arrested in 2009 for protesting the same education policy that is penalizing his children today.” His case attracted international intention and drew outrage, leading to Iran fabricating charges against him, much like what is done in Pakistan against Christians who suffer persecution by means of trumped-up charges of blasphemy.
In 2011, when international protests mounted against “the possible execution of Youcef Naderkhani….Iran’s state-supported Fars News Agency claimed…that Youcef Naderkhani’s charges are ‘rape’ and ‘repeated extortion.’” The regime added further fake accusations of his “acting against national security.”
“Nardarkhani tried to ensure his children were recognized as Christians before he was sent back to prison in 2018 so they wouldn’t have to take Islamic studies. However, the matter has yet to be resolved.”
Nadarkhani’s life, like those of many other apostates, has been marked by suffering since his conversion to Christianity 10 years ago, and there is no end in sight. Meanwhile, Islamic states and Islamic supremacists force their “Islamophobia” canard upon the world, while the human rights of Christians and other minorities are trampled under the mantra “Islam is a religion of peace.”
According to Open Doors USA, which monitors persecution in dozens of countries, Christians are prohibited from sharing their faith with non-Christians. Additionally, Muslims are not allowed to visit church services. Christians that do reach out to non-Christians run the risk of having their churches closed by authorities.
“Imprisoned Iranian pastor’s kids denied school certificates for refusing to study Islam,” by Samuel Smith, Christian Post, October 1, 2019:
Imprisoned Iranian pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has gone on a hunger strike to protest the regime’s attempt to bar his children from completing their education because they refuse to study Islam and read the Quran.
According to Article 18, an organization that promotes religious freedom and tolerance for Christians in Iran, Nardarkhani’s teenage children went back to school last week but were told they hadn’t completed the previous grades.
While two of his youngest children have been told they can’t come back to school because they have not received credit for completing the previous grades, 17-year-old Daniel has been accepted back as a “guest” in the 12th grade but still has not received a certificate telling him that he completed the previous grades.
Nadarkhani, a Muslim convert who pastored a house church in the Gilan Province, is serving a 10-year prison sentence in Iran’s notorious Evin Prison in Tehran on charges of “acting against national security.”
He was arrested in May 2016 and charged with promoting “Zionist Christianity,” and violating the national alcohol prohibition through communion and acting against national security.
Nadarkhani was first arrested in 2009 for protesting the same education policy that is penalizing his children today. The policy requires all students to take a course on the Quran…..
DHazard says
People will make up anything to silence their critics. But this charge of spreading “Zionist” Christianity shows the deep disdain of non-Muslims at the heart of Iranian justice, not to mention Islam. What makes it more tragic is that at least half of the population of Iran is tired of Islamic hatred.
gravenimage says
Not all people do this–pious Muslims certainly do, though.
AntiIslamicman says
Don’t study their nonsense
Rarely says
Lucky (?) to be alive.
James Lincoln says
YES…
mortimer says
Rarely … news flash … LIFE OFTEN CHALLENGES US TO DO SOMETHING HARD FOR THE SAKE OF CONSCIENCE.
Infidel says
That’s fine, his kids don’t need to be educated in Iran. Hopefully, one day he’d be released to go to any country of his choice, and once there, his kid can learn the language and culture of that place and be a productive citizen
Angemon says
Regarding the death penalty for those who leave islam, I keep hearing the following from islamic apologists: “oh, it was just back then, it had nothing to do with islam itself, it was just that those who left islam did so because they were out to get muslims, and acted as spies and terrorists, so it was a matter of self-defence”. I guess muslims throughout history haven’t seen a single genuine convert out of islam – there must always be a nefarious purpose behind any apostate from islam…
J D S says
One other thing I’d like to see happen, along with many other good things President Trump has done is this,….Any Islamic nation that in any way suppresses other religions will be cugt off from any relations with the U.S.till they comply. ESPECIALLY NO FUNDS OR COMMODITIES.
commonsense says
J D S: Your idea has merit, and should receive serious consideration, but I won’t be holding my breath.
gravenimage says
True, Angemon–you hear this bs all the time from Muslims.
AP says
You can easily educate your self. It is called reading!
Infidel says
Does that pastor’s kids know A-Z in English, or just Farsi? If only the latter, then right now, he’s SOL: I doubt there’s any secular Farsi literature worth reading: it’s all written after Iran’s Islamization in the 9th century. (And no, Shahnameh will do him no good).
If that kid does know English, he has a chance, but someone still needs to educate him. Most kids can’t just get on Kindle and start reading
mortimer says
Don’t count on it. And don’t underestimate how this may play out. Iran loses more and more respect worldwide every day in its constant breaches of human rights. Everyone has a right to change his religion according to conscience.
KWJ says
English is taught in Iranian schools. People I know from there learned there. It may not be every school but it’s taught. Ayatollah Khameini complains about it but he knows it’s most useful. He knows four languages but I’ve never heard him speak English. At the least he may be able to read it. They’re mental. Some of their crimes are officially called “corruption upon the earth” and such Islamic inspired terms.
gravenimage says
Without a formal education these kids will be barred from many professions, no matter how well educated they might be.
Walter Sieruk says
Pastor Yousef Nadarkhani has been persecuted along with his family because he is so brave and bold as to take a stand for Jesus in that tyrannical Islamic rogue state of Iran in which those demonically controlled Muslim clerics had terrible power in the anti-Christian tyranny
Furthermore, it would be naive not to understand the those mullahs and ayatollahs didn’t have a hand in having their stooges , who are Islamic state police, the Revolutionary Guard s arrest many other Christians because those in power in the Islamic tyranny are ruthless and cruel.
This Islamic cruel intolerance is further proof that Islam is such a weak and fragile religion that the arrest of those few Christians was felt necessary by the ayatollah, mullah and imams of Iran. For those Muslim clerics are afraid that if the Iranian people even have a chance to examine and thus compare and contrast the Bible and the Quran the people of Iran might discover that the Bible of the super of those two books.
Since the foundation for the tyrannical regime of the Islamic “Republic” of Iran is based on the Quran, which is also the entire foundation for of Islam, the Muslim clerics fear that their power base might collapse. So the arrests and sentencing to death of Christians reveals extreme fear those Muslim clerics have of the Bible, For this also show that those Muslim clerics in power in that “mullahs regime” of Iran will use .the Islamic state police and their tools to stop Christians and keep the Iranian people in in ignorance of the Bible and in the darkness of Islam
Those mullahs and ayatollahs and imams of Iran with their falsehoods and deceptions of the many false doctrines of Islam in which they brainwash the Iranian people in believing is something that is both sad and tragic. Those ayatollahs and mullahs are, no doubt, just as deluded as the people who they thoroughly indoctrinate with false teachings of Islam. Of such demonic deception by false teachers who are also deluded such men a have been predicted in the Bible. For in the Bible it’s written that “Evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse deceiving and being deceived.” Second Timothy 3:13. [K.J.V.] All those mullahs and ayatollahs are, according to the doctrines of the Bible, Isaiah 8:20. false religious teachers .Meaning false teachers who teach and indoctrinate the false doctrines of the false religion of Islam into the hearts and minds of others . Such false teachers are described in the Bible ,in Second Peter 2:1. “There were false prophets also among the people, even as there shall be false teachers among you, who privately shall bring in damnable heresies, even denying the Lord that bought them, and bring upon themselves swift destruction.”
In addition, it should be make clear that in the context and meaning of the above Bible verse Second Peter 2:1. The word “destruction” does not mean “loss of being but loss of well-being ,as the destruction of well- being . That is “going to ruin” by ending up and a terrible place of awful suffering which the Bible call hell, Luke 16:19-31.
MariForever says
WELL SAID Walter.
KWJ says
Such attitudes are happening in the USA schools that are teaching Islam, and too much of it. Parents who have said they don’t want their kid in such a class are threatened that their kid will get a failing grade. Our schools are so paid off and leftists appear to forget that liberals pushed for religion to be out of public schools.
I went to a Catholic high school; my family was not Catholic and I had already decided I didn’t believe in God but I still had to take four years of religion classes, just didn’t have to go to Friday mass. Iran thinks like that. It might be useful to take the class and then discuss it with their parents.
An Iranian friend has read the Qur’an 3x once in Arabic (he’s not fluent but claims the religious language is easy.) He also read Tabari’s history book and hadith, one of at least six Persian Empire territory Hadith writers. He did very well in his Qur’an classes but by 25 yrs old he became an apostate. The mullahs are very annoyed that more Iranians are converting to Christianity. There are still Zoroastrians too, but that’s slightly more acceptable, naturally.
Iranians get a “softer” teaching of Islam unlike Saudi Arabia, Gaza, etc.
gravenimage says
Islamic Republic of Iran: Imprisoned ex-Muslim pastor’s children denied education because they won’t study Quran
………………
The Mullahs are doing everything possible to isolate this poor family.
gravenimage says
Where is christianblood, to tell us that this is not real persecution of Christians?
Dawne Swift says
Frankly, Iran needs to be nuked.