The U.S. State Department has classified Iran as a “country of particular concern” for “having engaged in or tolerated particularly severe violations of religious freedom.”
“‘I still remember all their threats,’” Article 18, August 7, 2024:
Maryam Jalili was 40 years old when she became a Christian, and by then had already been through so much.
At the age of just 17, Maryam’s firstborn son, who had been born in the year of the Islamic Revolution of 1979, died after contracting meningitis. Then, while Maryam was in her late thirties, one of her sisters died in an accident on her way to a family wedding.
At this point, Maryam says she questioned the “justice and wisdom” of God, and despite attending many Islamic ceremonies and gatherings, received “no clear answers” and “couldn’t find the peace and comfort I was desperately seeking”.
So when a relative introduced her to the Bible and to Jesus’ promise of finding “rest”, she says she “felt such peace in my heart and it felt like I had finally found what I had been searching for, for years”.
Yet, the road ahead was to prove anything but straightforward for the new Christian convert, especially in a religious city like Neyshabur, which is near Mashhad.
Maryam was soon arrested, alongside four other Christians…
During those months, Maryam says she was “constantly threatened” during many long interrogations, one of which she says lasted from 8 in the morning until 10 at night.
One interrogator told her to look beneath her blindfold at a hole in the wall.
“That was caused by the head of a detainee who didn’t cooperate,” she was told. “If you don’t cooperate, the same will happen to you.”
In another interrogation, she was told: “I’ll put the noose around your neck and kick the stool from under you myself!”
After Maryam was finally released on bail, she was sentenced to five years in prison for “gathering and collusion against the security of the state”….
“…all our charges presented in the court session were summarised under one charge in the court’s verdict: ‘Acting against national security through forming an illegal group and running it to deceive Muslims and promote Christianity.’…
