A JAILED IRANIAN PASTOR’S CHRISTMAS PRAYER
Wall Street Journal
Dec 23 2014
This will be Pastor Farshid Fathi’s fourth Christmas in an Iranian
prison, yet his fortitude, faith and indomitable spirit continues to
impress and encourage.
By Miles Windsor Dec. 23, 2014 4:09 p.m. ET
For Christians across the West, this week is a time to celebrate.
Multitudes will throng to church for Christmas services–some dragged
along by family members, others seeking peaceful sanctuary from the
worries of daily life. They will gather there to mark the birth of
their savior, of the God who entered the world in the most humble
of circumstances.
Elsewhere in the world, millions of their co-religionists are
threatened and prevented from exercising their fundamental right to
worship openly, even in this holy season. Christian communities in
North Korea, Pakistan and across much of the Middle East and Africa,
among other places, face various forms of persecution, whether meted
by tyrannical governments or by Islamist fanatics. According to an
estimate by the International Society for Human Rights, some 80%
of all acts of religious violence target Christians.
One of those persecuted Christians is Farshid Fathi, a pastor who this
year will mark his fourth Christmas in an Iranian prison cell. Born
in 1979, the year Ayatollah Khomeini toppled the shah and founded
the Islamic Republic, Pastor Fathi converted to Christianity at the
age of 17. As the pastor would soon learn, Iran is a very dangerous
place to worship Christ.
The Tehran regime likes to tout its treatment of Iran’s historic
Christian communities, the Armenians and Assyrians, as a testament to
its tolerance. It’s true that Armenians and Assyrians are officially
recognized as “People of the Book” under Iranian law, and that status
affords them a measure of legal protection. But it also relegates
them to second-class status. Their churches and schools are intensely
surveilled, their inheritance rights are subsidiary to their Muslim
relatives’, and they are barred from many public offices.
The mullahs reserve the most vicious treatment for Iranian Muslims,
like Pastor Fathi, who have dared to convert to Christianity.
Persian-language Bibles are banned in the country, and apostasy is
punishable by death under Shariah law, which lies at the heart of the
Iranian penal code. Yet to mask its naked persecution of Christian
converts, the Tehran regime usually jails them on national-security
charges or on the pretext that they spy for foreign powers.
That’s what happened to Pastor Fathi. In December 2010, the father
of two was arrested and arbitrarily detained in Tehran’s nightmarish
Evin Prison. His “crime” was serving as the leader of a network of
underground evangelical house churches. After a yearlong interval,
during which he spent months in solitary confinement and was subjected
to psychological abuse, he was convicted by a revolutionary court of
“acting against national security” and sentenced to six years.
In April, Pastor Fathi was one of several prisoners beaten during
an attack by security forces on Ward 350 of Evin, which houses many
of the country’s most prominent dissidents. More recently, he was
transferred to a different prison, Rajai Shahr, outside Tehran,
where he shares a cell with hardened criminals. His right to family
visits, guaranteed under Iran’s own laws, is routinely violated. He
isn’t permitted to sing Christians hymns, and prison authorities have
confiscated his Bible.
For the past few years, I have been advocating on behalf of Pastor
Fathi and other Iranian Christians in Westminster and before the
regime’s representatives. Though his case angers me and calls me
to action, I am more often impressed and encouraged by the pastor’s
fortitude, faith and indomitable spirit as they are reflected in his
letters to supporters from prison.
His latest contains a powerful Christmas message: “Although the beauty
of Christmas or the signs of Christmas cannot be found in this prison,”
the pastor writes, “with the ears of faith I can hear the everlasting
and beautiful truth that: ‘The virgin will conceive and give birth
to a son, and they will call him Immanuel.'”
It is signed “your captive brother who is free in Christ.”
Mr. Windsor, a London-based public-affairs strategist, works on behalf
of Christians persecuted in the Middle East.
http://www.wsj.com/articles/miles-windsor-a-jailed-iranian-pastors-christmas-prayer-1419368962