November 22-2013
Four Christian converts in Rasht have been sentenced to 80 lashes each for drinking wine.
Wine is legal for Christians in the Islamic Republic and several wineries produce wine with no problem for Armenians and other Christians, who use the wine in their communion services.
But the four who were sentenced last week were converts, not members of the Christian ethnic groups long accepted in Iran. The court ruled that Muslims may not convert and that therefore they had violated the law forbidding Muslims from drinking wine.
The first of the four, Behzad Taalipas, was lashed last Wednesday with “extreme violence,” according to the news service of Christian Solidarity Worldwide.
Traditional Christian churches use wine in the Holy Communion service. But many conservative Protestant and Evangelical churches condemn alcohol and use grape juice for communion. Most of the new churches in Iran that seek converts—and thus inflame the regime—are Evangelical, so it isn’t clear why they were using wine in communion.