Source: Article18, November 25, 2021<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Iran\u2019s Supreme Court has ruled that nine Christian converts serving five-year prison sentences for their involvement in house churches should not have been charged with \u201cacting against national security,\u201d in what has the potential to become a landmark ruling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the ruling is not enough on its own to set an official \u201cprecedent,\u201d nevertheless it has the potential to influence all current and future cases involving Persian-speaking Christians.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The ruling, handed down on November 3 but only communicated to the Christians\u2019 lawyers [November 24], states explicitly that their involvement in house churches and even the propagation of what is referred to as the \u201cEvangelical Zionist sect\u201d should not be deemed against national security. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This is significant, because in each of the cases involving the more than 20 Christians<\/a> currently incarcerated in Iran for their involvement in house churches, the charges amounted to \u201cactions against national security.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n See the full story<\/a> with pictures and read other stories about persecution in Iran<\/a> from Article18. They report the men were released January 1<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Another encouraging story comes from Africa, where more than 500 Muslims attended a Christmas service to promote religious tolerance in Nigeria<\/a> (International Christian Concern).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Source: Article18, November 25, 2021 Iran\u2019s Supreme Court has ruled that nine Christian converts serving five-year prison sentences for their involvement in house churches should not have been charged with \u201cacting against national security,\u201d in what has the potential to become a landmark ruling. While the ruling is not enough on its own to set … Continue reading Iran: Court Rules Christians Did Not Act Against National Security<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news-briefs"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10698"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10701,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10698\/revisions\/10701"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10698"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10698"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/missionscatalyst.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10698"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}