October 08, 2021
Three men have become the first Christians punished under a newly-amended Iranian law intended to stop the growth of Christianity and other non-Muslim religions.
According to Morning Star News, a US-based outlet reporting on the treatment of Christians in the non-Christian world, Amin Khaki, Milad Goudarzi and Alireza Nur-mohammadi received the maximum sentence of five years in prison and were fined 400 million rials ($1,500) for spreading “propaganda” against Islam.
They were sentenced under the recently amended Article 500 of the penal code, which states that “any deviant education or propaganda that contradicts or interferes with the sacred Sharia (Islamic law) will be severely punished.” The amended law, which went into effect March 5, increases prison terms and allows the state to deny certain rights, such as voting, for as long as 15 years.
Previously, Christian converts typically received a six-month sentence, the organization reported.
Although Christianity is a recognized faith in Iran with official status, that recognition applies only to long-established ethnic churches and not groups that are avidly trying to convert Iranian Muslims.
The three men are all from Fardis, a town just south of Karaj.
A recent poll conducted by the Netherlands-based GAMAAN (Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran) found only 32 percent of those surveyed identified themselves as Shiite. But few indicated they were converting to Christianity; only 1.5 percent of those polled called themselves Christians. But 31 percent said they were atheist or had no religion while 19 percent identified themselves as spiritualist, agnostic, sophist or humanist.
The one faith that showed unusual growth was Zoroastrianism, which 8 percent of those polled identified with. In the 2011 census, only 25,000 Iranians, or less than 1/10th of 1 percent, said they were Zoroastrian. There appears to a trend among many nationalists in Iran to claim ties to Zoroastrianism more in a political context to express opposition to the Islamic Republic than as religious expression.