An Iranian convert who goes on a Christian satellite channel to tell how he found faith may soon pay for it with 31 to 74 lashes. Last week Iran’s parliament approved Article 22 of a bill titled “Countering the Infiltration of Foreign Intelligence Services and Governments or Entities,” which makes it a crime for Iranian citizens to give interviews to, or hold conversations with, any media outlet or “media figure” that the Ministry of Intelligence has publicly designated as hostile. That list already names the leading Persian-language Christian broadcasters.
“Anybody connected to us, anybody working for us, anybody supporting us, even appearing on our channel, even going and doing a like on our social media, is a criminal, officially criminal,” said Hormoz Shariat, founder of the Dallas-area Iran Alive Ministries, in an interview with Peter Wooding of the Global News Alliance.
The ayatollahs are fighting a war against a television signal. That raises a question with roots going back 2,500 years to the Persian court of King Darius: what happens when an empire writes a law forbidding people to pray?
Under Article 22, violators face six months to two years in prison, fines, deprivation of social rights, and flogging, according to FCNN, a Persian Christian news outlet. Officials of the Islamic Republic are explicitly exempt. A regime spokesman can appear on a “hostile” channel, while a convert who shares his testimony on Mohabat TV can be flogged for it. The bill must still clear further legislative steps, including Guardian Council approval, before it becomes law.
Shariat said the regime’s aim is fear. “Another law, another fear. That’s how they control the people of Iran, passing laws and making it harder to follow [Jesus], so easier persecution,” he said. He added that satellite viewers remain beyond the regime’s reach. “The signal goes over the heads of the mullahs into people’s homes, and the government cannot stop it, and you cannot prove that you are watching it.”
The broadcasts matter because Iran has shut down nearly every other avenue for Christian worship. Since 2009, churches that offered services in Persian have been forced to stop, and pastors who kept ministering to converts in their homes have been arrested and imprisoned along with the converts themselves. Only Iran’s historic Armenian and Assyrian communities may worship, and they are barred from sharing their faith. In August, guards were posted outside a seized Tehran church to keep worshipers out.
Last week, Lida Alexani, a 58-year-old grandmother and wife of Iranian-Armenian pastor Joseph Shahbazian, was summoned to begin a 13-year sentence for “deviant proselytizing contrary to the holy religion of Islam.” Her husband is already serving a 16-year sentence for leading a house church. The couple and three converts in the same case were collectively sentenced to more than 70 years.
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