Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin

Tuesday, October 13, 2020

RLPB 571. Iran: The High Cost of Discipleship

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 571 | Wed 14 Oct 2020
RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

Please forward this prayer bulletin widely and encourage others to sign up in the “Follow by email” box on the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RLPB) blog. ‘For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds’ (2 Corinthians 10:4 ESV).

IRAN: THE HIGH COST OF DISCIPLESHIP
plus: Believing Muslims now a Minority in Iran
By Elizabeth Kendal

On 1 July 2019 Iranian Christian converts Sam Khosravi (36) and his wife, Maryam Falahi (35), were among eight Christians arrested during raids by the Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS) in Iran's Persian Gulf city of Bushehr [RLPB 510 (10 July 2019)]. While Sam's mother (who is 61) was released because of her age, the remaining seven believers (four men and three women) were convicted of spreading 'propaganda against the state', 'collusion', and 'membership of a group hostile to the regime'. On 21 June 2020 the four men were handed custodial sentences of up to one year in prison each. Sam and his brother, Sasan, received one-year jail terms after which they will face work restrictions and be required to serve a further two years in internal exile. The three women were fined and Maryam, who is a nurse, was also banned for life from working in the public sector (including hospitals) [RLPB 557 (8 July 2020)]. The rulings are being appealed.

Sam and Maryam with daughter, Lydia.

As if that were not enough, on 19 July 2020 - in a ruling that has only just come to light - the court also ordered that Sam and Maryam's 20-month-old adopted daughter, Lydia, be returned to state care because, as Christians, Sam and Maryam were 'not fit' to raise her. Sam and Maryam adopted Lydia - who has special needs caused by heart and gastrointestinal diseases - from an orphanage in February 2019 when she was just 10 weeks old and have loved and cared for her ever since. Judge Muhammad Hassan Dashti appeared reluctant to hand down the ruling, leaving observers convinced he was acting under pressure from MOIS. In his verdict, Judge Dashti acknowledged that Lydia displayed an 'intense emotional attachment' to her adoptive parents. He lamented that 'considering the health of the child and her illness, there is zero possibility of giving her away to another family. If the child returns [to the orphanage], it is possible that she would be forever under the protection of the Welfare Department'. With evident sympathy he noted that Sam and Maryam adopted Lydia because 'in 13 years of marriage, [they] didn't have a child to bring light and warmth to their home', before submitting that Lydia (deemed Muslim by the state) should never have been placed in their care.

In seeking to overturn the verdict, the couple's lawyer obtained fatwas (religious rulings) from two Grand Ayatollahs. Grand Ayatollah Naser Makarem Shirazi decreed that due to 'necessity' the child may stay in the family and that the adoption is therefore 'permissible'. Grand Ayatollah Yousef Saanei confirmed that the adoption does not violate Iranian law, and decreed that the child's religion should be determined at puberty. Despite this, on 22 September, the appeals court upheld the ruling and ordered that Lydia (now just shy of her second birthday) be removed from Sam and Maryam's care and returned to the orphanage. The case has prompted an outpouring of sympathy. Advocates are appealing for prayer, that the state might relent and allow Sam and Maryam to keep and care for Lydia as their adopted child. This is critically important, not only for Sam, Maryam and Lydia, but for all Iranian Christians with adopted children.

PLEASE PRAY THAT GOD OUR HEAVENLY FATHER WILL

* cause a supernatural peace to well up as a spring within the hearts of Sam, Maryam and Lydia; may they look to Jesus for 'rest' (Matthew 11:28); may the Spirit of God bring confidence and hope (Psalm 3:3) and may all persecuted and threatened Iranian Christians know the intimate closeness of their faithful, compassionate and sovereign Heavenly Father (Romans 8:31-39).

'O Holy Spirit, Grant me the faith that will protect me from despair ...' Dietrich Bonhoeffer (Letters and Papers from Prison, Morning prayers, Christmas 1943).

* intervene in Iran to stir up indignation over Lydia's case; we pray especially for Judge Muhammad Hassan Dashti and Grand Ayatollahs Naser Makarem Shirazi and Yousef Saanei; may the Spirit of truth enlighten their minds, may the Son enlighten their hearts and may the God of compassion fill them with a burning indignation that cannot be contained.

* intervene so that the state will relent of this shameful ruling so that Lydia might remain with Sam and Maryam, and so no other Christian family will have to fear or suffer such a cruelty.

UPDATE to RLPB 564 (26 Aug): Joseph Shahbazian (56, an ethnic Armenian) and Malihe Nazari (46, a Persian convert) were arrested in a Tehran house church on 30 June and imprisoned with bail that was exorbitant, unobtainable and unprecedented. We thank God that both Joseph and Malihe have now been released on reduced bail; their trials are pending. Please pray for all Iranian Christians who are facing charges, or who are in prison and separated from loved ones because of their faith; pray also for courageous lawyers, and that indignation over the lack of freedom would continue to grow.

SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
------------------------------------------------------------
THE HIGH COST OF DISCIPLESHIP IN IRAN

On 1 July 2019 Iranian Christian converts Sam Khosravi (36) and his wife, Maryam Falahi (35), were among eight Christians arrested in Bushehr. In July 2020 Sam was sentenced to one year in prison, followed by work restrictions and two years' internal exile. Maryam (a nurse) was fined and banned for life from working in the public sector (including hospitals). The court also ruled that Sam and Maryam's 20-month-old adopted daughter Lydia should be returned to state care because, as Christians, Sam and Maryam were 'not fit' to raise her. On 22 September an appeals court upheld the ruling despite religious edicts from two Grand Ayatollahs deeming the adoption permissible. Please pray for Sam, Maryam and Lydia, and that the state would be forced to relent and not enact this ruling.

------------------------------------------------------------

EXTRA: BELIEVING MUSLIMS NOW A MINORITY IN IRAN

Iran's Islamic regime does not allow religious conversions out of Islam. However, while the state is unwilling to recognise conversions, it still punishes converts as infidels and apostates while continuing to count them as Muslims. This is nothing but a grand deception.

According to a new poll by the Group for Analyzing and Measuring Attitudes in Iran (GAMAAN, a secular non-profit institute in the Netherlands), only 32 percent of all Iranians consider themselves to be Shia Muslims! GAMAAN surveyed 50,000 Iranians (90 percent of whom were inside Iran) and found that, while 78 percent still believe in God, around half have rejected their religion, while six percent have converted to another faith, including 1.5 percent who now identify as Christian. On the basis of its research, GAMAAN estimates that at least 750,000 Christians currently reside in the Islamic Republic (twice the previous estimate), while those who identify as Muslim are now a minority. [GAMAAN report, in Persian.]

GAMAAN findings, in English.
source: Christianity Today (3 Sep 2020)
(click on image to enlarge)

----------------------------------

Elizabeth Kendal is an international religious liberty analyst and advocate. She serves as Director of Advocacy at Canberra-based Christian Faith and Freedom (CFF) and is an Adjunct Research Fellow at the Arthur Jeffery Centre for the Study of Islam at Melbourne School of Theology.

She has authored two books: Turn Back the Battle: Isaiah Speaks to Christians Today (Deror Books, Melbourne, Australia, Dec 2012) which offers a Biblical response to persecution and existential threat; and After Saturday Comes Sunday: Understanding the Christian Crisis in the Middle East (Wipf and Stock, Eugene, OR, USA, June 2016).

See www.ElizabethKendal.com

Tuesday, October 6, 2020

RLPB 570. Turkey, Azerbaijan, Artsakh and the Armenians

Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin | RLPB 570 | Wed 07 Oct 2020
RLPB is published weekly to facilitate strategic intercessory prayer.

Please forward this prayer bulletin widely and encourage others to sign up to “Follow by email” on the Religious Liberty Prayer Bulletin (RLPB) blog. ‘The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective’ (James 5:16 NIV).

TURKEY, AZERBAIJAN, ARTSAKH AND THE ARMENIANS
-- 'Turkey and Azerbaijan have genocidal intent'
By Elizabeth Kendal

Political Geography Now timeline (2 Oct 2020)

Azerbaijan and Turkey have launched a war against the Armenians for control of Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K), an Armenian enclave inside Azerbaijan. Mountainous and forested, thousands of churches adorn N-K's peaks, many dating back to the 10th Century. DNA samples from excavated bones indicate that Armenians have been settled in the region for at least 4,000 years. For many centuries the region was known as 'Artsakh' and was a province of Armenia. When Russia annexed the region from the Persian Empire in 1805, the population of N-K was 94 percent ethnic Armenian, as it was in 1923 when the Soviet Union's Communist dictator Joseph Stalin mischievously and fatefully made Orthodox Armenian N-K an autonomous region (or oblast) of the Turkic Muslim Azerbaijan Soviet Socialist Republic. In December 1991, following the break-up of the Soviet Union, the residents of N-K held a referendum on independence in which 99.98 percent voted to secede from Azerbaijan. N-K's Azeri minority boycotted the vote and Azerbaijan responded with war. Ultimately the Armenians prevailed. Since then, the region has existed as a democratic self-ruled Armenian province inside Azerbaijan. In 2017 N-K's residents voted to change the region's name from Nagorno-Karabakh (a Russian-Azerbaijani hybrid) to Artsakh, the name by which it was known from the early 11th Century. RLPB will use the name 'Artsakh', not simply because history matters, but because, despite Stalin's mischief and the UN's intransigence, the region is Armenian.

Spurred on by neo-Ottoman Turkey, Azerbaijan is determined to seize control of Artsakh, which it claims solely on the basis of Stalin's 1923 declaration. There is no guarantee these Turkic Islamists will not extend the fight to Armenia itself. Make no mistake, one hundred years after the Armenian Genocide, Turkey and Azerbaijan have genocidal intent. Indeed, Azerbaijan's President Aliyev once even predicted that 'Armenia will soon perish from the world map'. According to Turkish journalist, Amberin Zaman, the current escalation 'was not sparked by accident but was pre-planned by Azerbaijan and its regional ally Turkey'. This claim is backed up by the testimony of foreign jihadists who report being recruited in Syria's Idlib Province a month before fighting began. This happens to be around the same time Turkey and Azerbaijan were conducting 'large-scale' joint air and land military exercises inside Azerbaijan in the wake on the July clashes [RLPB 560 (29 July)]. According to Armenia, as many as 4000 jihadists have arrived in Azerbaijan from Syria, courtesy of Turkey.

This crisis has the potential to escalate every bit as severely as did the crisis in Syria and along similar lines: Orthodox Armenia (backed by Orthodox Russia and Iran [which opposes Azeri nationalism]) versus Islamist Turkic Azerbaijan (backed by NATO member neo-Ottoman Turkey and its jihadist proxies). Hosting very expensive British and American oil and gas infrastructure and boasting the very latest cutting-edge Israeli weaponry, Azerbaijan is confident, determined and refusing to talk. The Artsakh capital, Stepanakert, has been under heavy bombardment for days. The basement of Stepanakert's leading Armenian Apostolic Church - the Holy Mother of God Cathedral (also known as the Cathedral of Intercession) - now serves as a bomb shelter. Its vast underground hall is ringed by chapels now serving as temporary homes for families. 'It is probably the safest place in Stepanakert'' says the priest, 'protected by the granite and by Our Lord.' Men, some in uniform, guard the cathedral's entrance. 'We will never let the enemy get in very deep,' said a priest clutching a gold crucifix. After all, 'We are here,' he explains as air-raid sirens ring out, 'on the historical land of Armenian Christianity.'

Kumkapi, Istanbul,
28 September

FURTHERMORE, there is a real danger the conflict could spill over into both Iran and Turkey. In Iran, ethnic Azeri pro-Azerbaijan demonstrations have erupted in several Iranian cities, whilst in Turkey's Istanbul, Turkish nationalists have been threatening and intimidating the city's Armenians with impunity. On the evening of 28 September, a convoy of vehicles draped in and flying Azerbaijani flags descended on Istanbul's Kumkapi neighbourhood, which is home to a large Armenian population and the Armenian Orthodox Patriarchate. The government had approved the demonstration and Istanbul's governor did not intervene. On 30 September the demonstration was repeated, this time in Istanbul's Fener and Balat neighbourhoods, once home to many Jewish, Greek and Armenian residents. Opposition lawmakers and human rights activists have questioned whether the ruling AK Party is setting the stage for anti-Armenian pogroms and an Armenian exodus.

PLEASE PRAY THAT OUR ALMIGHTY GOD WILL

* intervene in grace and power to 'turn back the battle' (from Isaiah 28:5-6), 'that all the kingdoms of the earth may know that you alone are the Lord' (from Hezekiah's prayer, Isaiah 37:14-20 ESV).

* redeem this crisis to deepen and further personalise the faith of his people; may all Armenians keep their eyes fixed on Jesus (Hebrews 12:1-3) as they look to, call upon and put their hope in the LORD.

And Jesus came and said to them, 'All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me' (Matthew 28:18 ESV).

* protect and defend his people (Psalm 28) and bring the way of the wicked to ruin (Psalm 146).

'The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; he frustrates the plans of the peoples. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, the plans of his heart to all generations. Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord ... Behold, the eye of the Lord is on those who fear him, on those who hope in his steadfast love ... Our soul waits for the Lord; he is our help and our shield.' (excerpts from Psalm 33, ESV)

SUMMARY FOR BULLETINS UNABLE TO RUN THE WHOLE ARTICLE
------------------------------------------------------------
ARTSAKH (NAGORNO-KARABKH) ARMENIANS IMPERILLED

In 1923 Joseph Stalin gave Orthodox-Armenian Nagorno-Karabakh (N-K) to Turkic-Muslim Azerbaijan. In 1991, after the break-up of the Soviet Union, N-K voted to secede from Azerbaijan. In 2017 N-K voted to reclaim its historic name from when it was a province of Armenia: Artsakh. Spurred on by neo-Ottoman Turkey, Azerbaijan continues to lay claim to Artsakh. That the current conflict was pre-planned is evidenced by the presence of foreign jihadis who claim to have been recruited by Turkey from Syria's Idlib Province a month before fighting began. Some 4000 foreign jihadis are reportedly fighting with Azerbaijan. The Artsakh capital, Stepanakert, is under heavy bombardment. The cathedral's basement has become a bomb shelter. Confident and determined, Azerbaijan is refusing to talk. Turkic aggression against ethnic Armenians risks spreading into Iran and Turkey. Please pray.