When Iran became an Islamic Republic, immediately non-Muslims began to be repressed and persecuted. Yet anyone who notices the obvious connection is vilified as an “Islamophobe.”
“Iran’s exiled Crown Prince highlights ‘widespread and rampant persecution’ of Christians,” Article 18, November 20, 2024:
The exiled son of the former Shah of Iran has highlighted the “widespread and rampant persecution” of Christians and other religious minorities in the Islamic Republic.
In a post on X yesterday, Reza Pahlavi said his country was “once a bastion of religious liberty. But that changed with the Islamic Revolution of 1979”.
Iran was once a bastion of religious liberty. But that changed with the Islamic Revolution of 1979.
Alongside Jews and Baha’is, Iranian Christians immediately began to face widespread and rampant persecution. Christian and Catholic leaders were killed, detained, or forced to… https://t.co/V25i2NGaqh
— Reza Pahlavi (@PahlaviReza) November 19, 2024
“Alongside Jews and Baha’is, Iranian Christians immediately began to face widespread and rampant persecution,” he said. “Christian and Catholic leaders were killed, detained, or forced to flee the country…
“Today the persecution continues and Iranian Christians, especially Christian converts, are deprived of even the most basic rights, including access to churches.
“Christians are routinely imprisoned for their beliefs, facing absurd charges of ‘acts against national security’ and ‘collaboration and espionage for enemy states’.”
“Despite these daunting challenges”, Pahlavi said the Christian community “remains resilient”, and their “faith, courage, and hope serve as a testament to the enduring power of belief in the face of oppression”.
However, he said “their struggle is far from over, and they need the support of the global Christian community more than ever”.
Pahlavi concluded by saying there was “hope” that the fall of the Islamic Republic would “pave the way for a new era of religious freedom in Iran and across the Middle East”.
“A free and democratic Iran will once again embrace the diversity of faiths and beliefs that have been a part of our nation’s rich history for millennia,” he said. “Christians, Jews, Baha’is, Zoroastrians, and Muslims can once again live together in harmony, free to practice their religions without fear of persecution.”…
somehistory says
and if there were no mozlums, the others could get along.
Rarely says
There was religious freedom under the Shah??? I guess everything is relative.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
There obviously was. You may not have liked him for the excesses of SAVAK or other strongarm tactics that regimes did, but the experiments in Afghanistan and Iraq have emphatically demonstrated that if a muslim country is given total freedom, w/o curbing islam, the end result would be a theocratic dictatorship of some kind. Why are the -stans so hospitable today, compared to similar countries in their neighborhood, like Afghanistan and Iran? It’s b’cos of how the Soviets neutered islam in their crackdown on all religious expression. May or May not have been a good thing in Russia proper, but it was certainly a great thing in Turkistan
That said, I’m not rooting for the Pahlevi dynasty returning to power. I’m rooting for a new regime in Iran, maybe similar to Vietnam, where people have all the freedoms of a democracy, but where islam & communism are the exceptions: it would be illegal to follow or practice either. Yeah, they have to be militarily strong as well, so that countries like Turkey or Azerbaijan or Afghanistan can’t take advantage of them
Rarely says
Dream on.
Gurek says
Sadly, it seems that neither Iran nor any other Muslim country can be fixed. Name me a Muslim majority country that treats non-Muslims as equals? And even if a future government protected the minorities, the people would overthrow it, as seen recently in Bangladesh and previously in Iran, Afghanistan etc.
࿗Infidel࿘ says
I think if this islamic regime in Iran falls, the next regime that comes up should make it a point to ban any practice of islam, while allowing all other freedoms. But maybe it should be a semi-democracy like the -stans, such as Uzbekistan. During Karimov, the regime in Tashkent had a strict law regarding any observance of islam. That could be a model that Iran follows, if it can find someone who’d stamp islam out of Iran, restore most freedoms like in Vietnam, but make sure that it’s strong enough that predatory neighbors like the Arabs, Turks, Afghans, Pakis, etc don’t dare try threaten it, like they do, say, Armenia or Israel
OLD GUY says
Islam is the problem, it will not coexist with other religions unless it is weak and of small numbers in the population. Once Islam gains a strong foothold they become oppressors and rape, murder or drive out all none islamic followers.
OLD GUY says
Islam is the problem, it will not coexist with other religions unless it is weak and of small numbers in the population. Once Islam gains a strong foothold they become oppressors and rape, murder or drive out all none islamic followers.