In the United States, citizens share the luxury of the First Amendment freedom of religion, which restricts the government from establishing a state religion. It is widely documented that the systematic mistreatment of individuals based on their faith has existed for centuries, from the Spanish Inquisition’s expulsion of Muslims, to the Roman persecution of Christians, to the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people. However, across the world, many still face religious persecution today in ways that the majority of people fortunate enough to live in religious freedom remain oblivious to. 

In an interview with Eastside, Rasul Mohamadi, 54, an Iranian refugee currently living in Bulgaria, spoke on his experiences facing persecution in Kermanshah, Iran, as a Christian converted from a Muslim family. Living as a mechanical engineer, Mohamadi encountered an Iranian pastor in 2013 who began to teach him about Christianity. After two years, he fully converted to Christianity despite his devoutly Muslim family and distributed over 10,000 Bibles in Iran — a crime punishable by long-term imprisonment, torture, interrogation, and potential forced exile or Islamic re-education. 

“[When I converted], my mother told me to never talk to her again, my daughter left me, and my wife divorced [me],” Mohamadi said. 

He also shared the story of his Afghan friend, Mohsen, who faced immense hardship after converting to Christianity in Afghanistan, another Muslim country that is governed under strict interpretation of Sharia law. 

“After [Mohsen] became Christian, [his family] tried to kill him. They even killed his grandma. I tried to protect him because his brother told him [he would] come and kill him,” Mohamadi said. 

One day, Mohamadi’s efforts brought trouble to him in the form of the Gasht-e Ershad, Iran’s religious police tasked with enforcing Sharia law. The police, searching for the pastor who had escaped Iran, arrested Mohamadi and his Christian brother-in-law for a week. In the prison, the police brutalized both of them, even torturing them and leaving Mohamadi with a major head injury. Although they evaded severe punishment, it would not be their last encounter with the Iranian police. 

“[My brother-in-law] was flying to Kish Island, and he had one small Bible with him. They checked him and found it, and they [lashed him 80 times] on his back,” Mohamadi said. “He was also caught one more time and he was in prison for three weeks.”

Mohamadi shared that Christians who were caught by the Iranian police were forced to write letters proclaiming a desire to convert back to Islam in order to receive a reduced prison sentence. Those who refused would spend at least 15 years in prison, with the government wielding the power to extend sentences indefinitely or even kill noncompliant prisoners.

In 2016, Mohamadi and his brother-in-law were arrested again and taken to prison, where a prosecutor spoke to them. Fortunately, the prosecutor recognized the name of Mohamadi’s father-in-law, his former teacher, so he promised to help them. After being released on bail, Mohamadi received concerning news from the prosecutor.

“One week before the court date, the [prosecutor] called my brother-in-law and told him, ‘I don’t know what you want to do. I don’t know where you want to go. Just run. If they catch you, you have a minimum of 15 years in prison,’” Mohamadi said. 

In under an hour, Mohamadi, his brother-in-law, and his pregnant sister put together one bag containing all that remained of their belongings and fled from Iran to Turkey. While running from Turkey to Bulgaria, they were traveling with around 40 Pakistani and Afghan Muslims, who started praying and commanded them to pray too. When they refused, the group took their only bag of belongings and left them in the forest, where they wandered for three nights, during which it was so dark that Mohamadi could not see his hand directly in front of his face.

After another three days of walking down roads, they finally reached a refugee camp in Bulgaria, where Mohamadi met the pastor, who helped him start a new life there. To this day, Mohamadi, his brother-in-law, and his sister still live there and attend the church led by the pastor who converted him. 

Unfortunately, the tragic stories shared by Mohamadi are only a microcosm of a much greater, widespread issue of modern religious persecution. In much of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa, varying religious minorities continue to be systematically discriminated against, imprisoned, and killed for their faith. In Iran, even other sects of Islam like the Baháʼí Faith face persecution despite sharing similar beliefs to Iran’s government-imposed Sharia law. People under that faith are not allowed to go to university or obtain a passport or identification card. 

Ultimately, without changes to the current regimes in many countries with established state religions, religious persecution will continue to be one of humanity’s greatest afflictions, largely concealed from those who live under the freedom of religion. Regardless of whether the victims are Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, or of any other religion, stories like Mohamadi’s need to be shared to raise awareness of the issues that — contrary to popular belief — still exist today to a similar scale and degree that they have throughout history.