Source: Christian Today, May 7, 2019
Iran’s intelligence minister, Mahmoud Mahmoud Alavi, openly expressed concern about the spread of Christianity in the Islamic republic and said that some converts to Christianity were summoned to explain why they have converted.
According to the International Shia News Association, Alavi blamed evangelical propaganda for the increase in Iranian Muslims converting to Christianity in certain areas of the country.
Despite Christianity being criminalized in a country where the government is entangled with hardline Islam, the nation is experiencing one of the fastest evolving underground church movements in the world.
The intelligence minister reportedly said that although the agency is not responsible for finding the root cause of the mass religious conversion to Christianity in Iran, it is “happening right before our eyes.”
Underground house churches continue to spring up across Iran, although they must do so in secrecy because they risk torture and imprisonment in the Islamic republic.
Believers can be arrested for preaching the gospel or having a copy of the Bible translated into Farsi.
Although it’s hard to get an accurate read on how many Christians are in Iran, estimates have ranged from 800,000 to over 1 million.
» See also Worth A Thousand Years of Waiting: The Staggering Rise of the Church in Iran (Desiring God), which suggests four reasons for the growth and three ways to pray.
» In other religious liberty news, Iran’s neighbor Turkmenistan continues to tightly control the practice of Islam. Muslims are afraid to fast during Ramadan, attend mosques, or grow beards, lest they be labelled extremists (Forum 18 News Service). Forum 18 also reports that in Russia, at least 56 organizations and 103 individuals faced prosecution in 2018 under new anti-missionary legislation.