From the international media, you’d get the impression that this is how Muslims are treated in the U.S. and Europe, not the way Christians are treated in Iran. And the establishment media won’t say a word about this.
“‘We weren’t afraid of prison, but we were afraid of being raped,’” Article 18, October 1, 2021:
Emma’s interrogator said her arrest was part of a major national operation, in which Christians in as many as 23 other Iranian provinces had been detained.
It was the day after Christmas in 2010, just two months since the Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had warned in an infamous speech in Qom that the spread of house-churches were among the “critical threats” facing the Islamic Republic – by “deceiving young Muslims”.
It was a speech that made headlines around the world, and it seems as though Emma’s interrogator was one of those listening.
“He said that if they don’t stop Christians, and the Church, the security of the country would be at risk,” Emma recalls….
Emma, whose birth name was Azam Safaei, had been arrested at her home in Bandar Abbas, southern Iran, early in the morning of 26 December.
“It was between 6.30am and 7am when someone rang our doorbell,” she explains. “It was cloudy that day. I heard the bell, but I was still sleepy. Suddenly, my husband, Peyman, said loudly: ‘Get up, grab everything you can, and clean up. The MOIS [Ministry of Intelligence Service] are here. They’re climbing over the wall!’”
Four male agents proceeded to enter their home, waking up their school-age children, Negar and Navid, whom Emma says were “terrified and wanted to know what had happened”.
Eventually, the children were ordered to go outside and play in the garden.
“But out of curiosity, and also fear, from behind the curtain they tried to look inside the house,” Emma says, until an officer ordered them not to.
The agents then searched the property for anything related to Christianity, placing all they found on the floor of the family’s main room. These were the items that were to be confiscated.
They included, in Emma’s words, “paintings of Jesus and the Last Supper, a beautiful carved wooden cross, and a crystal cross we had bought from Kish [an island in the Persian Gulf], different Christian books, and a Bible which I had recently got for my mother”.
None of these items were ever returned.
Search completed, Emma was escorted out of her home and told to keep her head down as she was driven away to an unknown location.
She was then blindfolded and made to hold onto a roll of paper, with which she was led into a building.
“There were people laughing at me and telling me to be careful not to fall,” Emma explains….
She says that during her arrest, “the fear of being raped kept coming to my mind, and this made me suffer.
“We had heard a lot about the rapes of women, and even men, during the detentions in 2009 [after mass protests]. We were not afraid of going to prison, but we were afraid of being raped.
“Once, a man entered my solitary cell, with his shoes on, and other officers locked the door from the outside. I was very scared.
“He had a piece of paper in his hand, and he asked me medical questions. But after the interrogation ended, he asked, with a strange smile on his face, ‘Do you have experience being arrested? Does your husband know you’re here?’ I tensed up, became defensive, and didn’t look into his face. I only said: ‘Yes, he knows I’m here.’”
When Emma later refused to sign a piece of paper committing to no more involvement with Christians, she says her interrogator, knowing her fear of rape, used this “weakness” to imply that if she stayed in prison any longer, that would be the consequence.
“He said with a grin: ‘It seems as though you like it here and would like to stay longer?’ He had found my weakness, and started to speak suggestively,” Emma says.
“I bowed my head and said that I wouldn’t sign what he had written – that it would be like still being in prison, and take away my basic rights. How could I not connect with anyone?”
So the interrogator took another sheet of paper and changed some of the wording.
This time it read: “You don’t have the right to evangelise. You don’t have the right to gather with church members. You can’t travel from Iran to Armenia or Turkey. You must obtain written permission to travel to other cities within Iran… All until the judge issues a verdict.”
When Emma was finally brought before a judge – “a young man, strongly built” – she was struck by the cleanliness of the room.
“It felt very odd to see such a clean room in that place,” she says. “The smell of coffee also filled the room. Everyone was drinking coffee.”
This was in stark contrast to the place she had been held, which Emma describes as “a very dirty room with no windows… My body was itching because of the dust and dampness of the environment. The walls were painted only superficially; beneath the paint, you could see the scribbles of former prisoners. It was very depressing and suffocating.
“I asked for soap and they said there was soap. I told them that it was small and dirty. They laughed and said: ‘She thinks she’s come to a hotel!’”
The judge told Emma that what she had said in her interrogations about God being able to speak to people was blasphemy, and asked whether she already knew that his verdict was going to be the death sentence.
Emma’s response was both shocking and courageous.
“I said that if the God that I love issued my death sentence, then I would be ready to die,” Emma says. “The judge became angry and said that I was naive, looking for trouble, and that I had been deceived.”
This wasn’t the first time Emma had been threatened with death for her decision to become a Christian.
Inside the prison, she says “Ayatollah Khamenei’s speech about the death sentence for apostasy from Islam was regularly played over the loudspeakers”…..
Wellington says
Muslims in Muslim nations treat non-Muslims like shit and yet Muslims in the West expect to be accorded full equality (actually they are often accorded more than full equality because so many Western elites remain dopes about Islam—thus, Mo’s creed has been made, a la Orwell, more equal than other religions in one Western nation after another).
I despise double standards and Islam oozes double standards. It oozes a lot of other rot too like death for apostasy and the sanctioning of rape.
I hate Islam as much as I hate Nazism and Marxism. For a long time now, this has been my “starting point” when assessing anything Islamic. I think I am fully vindicated adopting such an analysis of the worst religion of all time. Anyone caring to refute my take on Islam, oh yeah, give it a shot, and I will respond—count on it.
mortimer says
Atheistic communism hates all religions, but hates some religions more than others, Judaism and Christianity are hated by the Marxists in particular, because both of those religions emphasize learning, rationality, and freedom. Islam does not, because Islam follows an illiterate prophet whose every characteristic is considered by Muslims to be ideal.
The Bolsheviks used the Muslims in Russia to destroy the churches and round up Christian clergy. After a few years of suppressing Christianity, and at the same time promoting Sharia law and Islamic schools, the Bolsheviks suddenly turned on the Muslims, and deported them from Russia and the Black Sea region to Siberia. There was one mosque kept open in Moscow to show to diplomats in order to deceive them. As a result, most Muslims in the Soviet Union became secular. There was no way to learn about Islam.
The Western Marxists are using the same playbook by ignoring the human rights of Christians and going overboard to highlight Muslim rights with the hope of forcing Christianity and Judaism into decline and through the importation of large numbers of Muslims to the West. Since Muslims do not value learning or freedom or human rights, they fit in well with the Marxist agenda of removing human rights and civil liberties. Where the Marxists will turn on the Western imported Muslims will be the issue of gender equality which doesn’t exist in Islam. This play is the same one used by Stalin as an excuse for sending most of the Muslims to Siberia, many of them as slave laborers. The betrayal of Muslims by Western Marxists is coming. In China, Muslim women are being sterilized so there will be no more Muslim babies … and Western Marxist-feminists say nothing about it.
Raja says
Good post Mortimer, I hope the stupid West minds its own business, especially in the light of perverted justice in favor of Islamist.
Keys says
+100%
Wellington, I hope somebody responds to refute your post. Would love to see that, but they’d lose and then resort to “ad hominem” attacks.
How ironic that the judge proclaimed this terrorized woman had been deceived !
gravenimage says
You are right that no one can refute Wellington’s post, Keys.
James Lincoln says
gravenimage,
It’s impossible to legitimately refute the truth.
Many try, with lies, spin, deflection, etc., but an informed and wise person will see through it immediately…
mortimer says
The refutation of facts and sound reasoning relies on FALLACIES of illogic. That is the main way that Muslims refute arguments that undermine faith in Islam. The ultimate fallacy used in Islam is the ARGUMENTUM AD BACCULUM or the appeal to force in place of reasoned argumentation.
The only way for someone to oppose Wellington’s very sound reasoning would be the devious use of fallacies and ’emotional reasoning’. An example would be the ‘Islamophobia’ smear which is in effect the fallacy of ‘special pleading’, namely, the claim that Muslims have a ‘special’ right not to hear criticism of Islam which no other religion possesses.
Kepha says
I am not interested in refuting Wellington chiefly because my own views are very much in accord with his.
But, one thing I take away from the persecution of Christians in Iran and China is that there’s a silver lining in this cloud–much as I would pray for divine relief for the brothers and sisters suffering as described in the article. The great post-Christian religions of Islam and Marxism-Leninism are apparently in a lot of trouble, with the young on whom they built their revolutions and in whom they reposed much hope being open to the Gospel. May the Holy Spirit continue his work in those lands.
Walter Sieruk says
This article is a reminder of not only how terribly intolerant and viciously suppressive that Islamic regime is , but also , in contrast , how free ,grand and wonderful the United States of America still is.
gravenimage says
Hear, hear!
mortimer says
Reply to Walter –
Summary: Islam has no respect for the freedom of conscience.
gravenimage says
Iran detains Christians in 24 provinces: ‘You don’t have the right to gather with church members’
………….
Emma is a brave, brave woman. Bless her.
Kepha says
The world is not worthy of such people as Emma.
gravenimage says
Some of us appreciate her and other brave people like her, Kepha.
Infidel says
Iran should have just told them that these are their new Covid-19 rules. They would then be no different from California or Ontario, and nobody can then accuse them of persecuting Christians
Keys says
Good one, infidel !
Infidel says
Thanks
gravenimage says
I suppose you are referring to restrictions on gatherings at the height of the Coronavirus lockdown.
“California revises indoor church guidelines after ruling”
https://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/california-revise-indoor-church-guidelines-ruling-75730702
But I live in California–whatever the problems here–and they are many–the implication that Christians are persecuted here as they are in Iran is mistaken.
Infidel says
How about Canada, though, where an ex Polish pastor was arrested on the highway? Don’t have the links to that story at the tip of my fingers, at the moment
OLD GUY says
Is there a reason that Americans should be concerned about the islamic invasion of our communities?
That could never happen in America, RIGHT.
WRONG, it is happening right now in small neighborhoods of large cities, where the islamic refugees/migrants literally trash and run out the American citizens and business through violence and intimidation.
Maybe it will change when islam reaches the gated communities that are so happy to be helping these poor migrants settle in someone else’s neighborhood.
Walter Sieruk says
Concerning the subject of the persecution regarding the harassment and imprisonment and even torture of Christians of Iran further expose the intolerant brutal and murderous “mullah regime “ of Iran.
First, 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 so many Christians because those in power in the Islamic tyranny are ruthless and cruel.
Second, this 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.
Third, 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 calls hell, Luke 16:19-31.