“My whole life was affected by persecution and harassment due to my faith,” he says, but the only way the international media would care would be if those persecuting him had been Jews or Christians. Then his story would be front-page news everywhere. But you will only read about this here.
“‘My whole life was affected by persecution and harassment due to my faith,’” Article 18, February 28, 2024:
Esmaeil Maghrebinezhad is pensive as he relates the story of his conversion to Christianity in the early days of the Islamic Republic and the knock-on effects this decision had on every aspect of his life.
“My whole life was affected by persecution and harassment due to my faith,” says Esmaeil, who will turn 70 later this year.
“After years of hard work, I couldn’t even get my retirement papers and had to leave Iran because of my judicial conviction; my wife got cancer due to the stress and pressure we were under and died; I lost my home; and my son also suffered from acute fear and obsession due to the pressure and threats of the Ministry of Intelligence.”
When Esmaeil first converted, the primary source of pressure came from his family, with Esmaeil’s father-in-law even encouraging his daughter to seek a divorce and the wider family cutting off contact with them when they stayed together.
“Some of my wife’s relatives worked in the Ministry of Intelligence and considered us ‘impure’,” Esmaeil explains. “So from that moment on, only my wife’s close relatives stayed in contact with us.”
It wasn’t long before Esmaeil and his family were also being harassed by the authorities, who also routinely referred to him as “impure” and demanded that he return to Islam.
“In the 1990s, going to the Ministry of Intelligence became a normal thing for me,” he says. “About three to four times a year, the Ministry of Intelligence would summon me, threaten me and tell me who I could and could not continue to have contact with.”
When Esmaeil’s wife died in 2013, Esmaeil requested that her body be laid to rest in the local Christian cemetery, but despite receiving a written confirmation from the Anglican bishop of Iran that Esmaeil’s wife had been a Christian, the request was rejected.
“On the day of the funeral, three agents from the Ministry of Intelligence were present as my wife’s body was washed in the Islamic way and placed in a shroud filled with Quranic verses,” Esmaeil recalls. “They prayed over her body, and after an Islamic ceremony was held by the caretakers of the Shiraz cemetery and the three agents, she was buried in the Muslim cemetery. Only five members of my family were allowed to attend the funeral: my two daughters, son, son-in-law, father-in-law, and myself.”
And still the pressure continued, culminating in Esmaeil’s violent arrest in 2019.
In his subsequent interrogations by the Ministry of Intelligence agents who detained him in solitary confinement for a week, it became apparent that a recent convert who had been asking Esmaeil questions about Christianity was married to an agent of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and both she and her husband had now fled the country.
Despite Esmaeil’s protestations that he hadn’t known this man, his position, or even that the couple had fled the country, he was threatened with execution if he didn’t reveal their whereabouts.
Three separate prison sentences were eventually prepared for Esmaeil, on charges of “propaganda against the state”, “membership of a group hostile to the regime”, and “insulting sacred Islamic beliefs”.
While the third conviction was eventually overturned, Esmaeil’s appeals against the other two sentences failed, leaving him facing imminent imprisonment.
Esmaeil says he was “ready to be imprisoned for my Christian faith’, but decided to leave Iran for the sake of his son, Ali, who had developed acute obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)….
tharmon says
The only izlahmic beliefs that I know of are that rape and murder are OK.
James Lincoln says
tharmon,
That is definitely more than the “average person” knows about islam.
Walter Sieruk says
Concerning the subject of the horrific persecution Esmaeil Meghrebinezhad by that “mullah regime “ of Iran as well the severe persecution , harassment and imprisonment and even torture of other Christians of Iran , this further expose the intolerant brutal and murderous horrific and hostile tyrannical regime of Iran towards Christians and Christianity.
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 call hell, Luke 16:19-31.
Walter Sieruk says
Those ayatollahs and mullahs who have so much terrible power in that Islamic regime of Iran enact severe persecutions against Christians because they fear that Christians by using their Bible will show many people in Iran that the way for a person to discover the truth concerning the nature of Jesus is found in the Bible verse Isaiah 8:20. This instructs “To the law of the testimony. If they do not speak according to the word, it is because there is no light in them.” [N.K.J.V.]
In other words, if a religious teacher has teaching that are in contradiction to the Word, the Bible, then that teachers is a false teacher who teaches false doctrines. The Muslim clerics, as the imam and mullahs, teach and speak doctrines about God from the Quran .
As the Quran in 112 teaches “He is God alone: God is the eternal begetteth not…” Likewise, this religious book which is the entire foundation of and for Islam further teaches in 19:35. “It is not befitting to God that He should beget a son.” In great contrast the Bible teaches in John 1:14. “The Word was made flesh and dwelt among us, and we beheld His glory , the glory of the only begotten of the Father ,full of grace and truth.” Likewise John 3:16 teaches “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son… Then just a little further in verse 18 it is written about Jesus Who is “the only begotten Son of God. “ Other places in the Bible further teach that Jesus is the Son of God as in Matthew 16:15:16. Luke 1:35. John 3:36. First John 4:14. 15. 5:14,15.
Moreover, to be even more clear the Bible teaches that Jesus is the Son of God, Who is God the Father. As found in Matthew 3:16,17. First John 2:22,23. 4:14,15. Of course , it ,very much, needs to made even more specific . The Bible teaches that Jesus is also God the Son. As seen in Hebrew 1:8 and First John 5:20.
The imams and mullahs as well as the other apologists for Islam will try to “explain” this all away. As in they will try brush off all those Bible verse off by making the claim that the Bible had been corrupted, through time, by Christians and that’s why the Bible reads as it does. That claim they make actually underestimate the Power of God to protect and keep His Word safe and intact ,through time, and away from the corruption of men.
In conclusion ,with the above instruction of the way to find doctrinal truth in Isaiah 8:20 and in the light of the Bible verse provided it may be clearly seen, by all those who are willing to see, that Islam is in terrible doctrinal error and it is therefore a false religion, Proverbs 14:12. John 14:6.
abu taleb says
If the law says one will be punished for insulting a religion, then Islam will have plenty of ways to accuse somebody insulting Islam. You leave Islam means Islam is no good for you, therefore you are insulting Islam. Same as not converting to Islam. Only the followers of Islam will do that.
Unfortunately, the western goverments have submitted to Islam, so it won’t be long for the Islamists to push for punishment for leaving Islam in the west.
Deus Vult says
Sounds about right then along comes the modern day Guy Fawkes.
Rick Olsha says
So AM YISRAEL CHAI !!!!!