This article is from the source 'guardian' and was first published or seen on . It last changed over 40 days ago and won't be checked again for changes.
You can find the current article at its original source at http://www.theguardian.com/world/iran-blog/2014/may/12/iran-converted-christians-sanctuary-germany-muslim
The article has changed 6 times. There is an RSS feed of changes available.
| Version 2 | Version 3 |
|---|---|
| 'Our second mother': Iran's converted Christians find sanctuary in Germany | 'Our second mother': Iran's converted Christians find sanctuary in Germany |
| (4 months later) | |
| On a breezy Sunday morning, 17 Christian converts are being baptized into a Berlin congregation just in time for Christmas. The yellow, stained-glass windows, situated high enough to catch the sun’s beams, are glowing. The old wooden pews creak as more people, Bibles in hand, shuffle in to take a seat. Pastor Gottfried Martens, in an emerald green-colored liturgical garment, addresses the converts as his congregation looks on. | |
| “Do you recant the devil and his evil words?” Marten's voice bellows through the church on a quiet residential street in the city's Zehlendorf district. “Do you recant Islam? Do you believe in Jesus Christ and The Holy Spirit?” One by one, they answer “yes,” as heads are dunked in holy water. A member of the church slips a cross pendant around the neck of each fresh convert. One looks at once amazed and unsure of her new identity and faith. A sea of smartphone cameras capture the moment by those in the crowd waiting for their own confirmations in the weeks ahead. | |
| Then, Bible verses are read - in Farsi. | |
| East Berlin is considered one of the most “godless” places in the world. Over 50% of its population identify as atheist. But membership numbers at St Mary’s Lutheran church are booming, up by more than 300 thanks to the growth of a phenomenon several congregations throughout Berlin and other cities in eastern Germany have been experiencing for the last few years. | |
| Iranian, and occasionally Afghan, émigrés have become emerging faces in what is considered to be waning religious life in Germany. | |
| After paying up to $30,000 to be smuggled into the country with fake passports, they've taken on western names, doubled congregation numbers in several independent Lutheran, Evangelical and Presbyterian churches, and eagerly await their baptism ceremonies while attempting to rebuild their lives as refugees. | |
| Germany hasn’t seen since an Iranian migrant population this large since after the 1979 revolution. The association of Iranian refugees in Berlin says the number of Iranians coming to Germany has doubled every year for the last five years, from less than 1,000 in 2008 to 4,348 in 2012. Figures from the federal office for migration and refugees in Germany confirms this trend: with over 3,500 Iranians granted asylum last year, Iran was one of five countries from which Germany saw a rise in asylum applications. | |
| Spread across multiple churches and asylum camps, Muslim- to-Christian converts from Iran make up a noticeable population of asylum seekers who say a growing crackdown on Muslim-born Christian converts back home, and disillusion from decades of living under Islamic law, have led them to Germany. Though Iranian converts can be found in The Netherlands, Sweden and Austria, Germany’s economic stability and reputation as a major refugee hosting country has made the European country the most desirable destination. | |
| “The refugees themselves have already heard that Germany is a safe destination,” says Rosemarie Gotz, a deaconess who has baptized close to 100 Iranians. “Greece is broke, Italy is broke, France is broke and Germany isn’t,” she says chuckling. | |
| Despite the risks of going through difficult mountainous terrain or getting caught, leaving home has remained the only viable option for a growing group of Iranians who say they will be jailed, tortured and at worst murdered for their religious beliefs. Though there is no specific punishment for apostasy, the rejection or abandonment of one’s former religion, the act is left open to lawmakers’ interpretation. This means the price Iran’s Muslim to Christian converts pay is unpredictable, and potentially life-threatening. | |
| An underground movement | An underground movement |
| Christianity has been largely present in Iran throughout the country’s long spanning history, from ancient Persia when several regions were early centers of the religion, to the welcoming of Iran’s first Anglican Bishop since the 7th century - a former Muslim convert named Hasan Deqani Tafti who went into exile after 1978, when life for religious minorities like Christians and most notably the marginalized Bahai community became increasingly difficult. | |
| Iran’s Christians have traditionally been ethnic Armenians and Assyrians who are able to practice their religion freely as long as they do not proselytize. | |
| In the last five- to-10 years however, satellite television has ushered in a new era of Iranian Diasporan Christian pastors eager to spread their message of faith to listeners back home. Ethnic Armenians and Assyrians have also begun sharing Christianity with their Muslim neighbors and friends. | |
| The proselytizing from Muslim-to-Christian converts in the Diaspora as well as Christian neighbors closer to home has led to the religion taking hold throughout Iran in numbers previously unseen. | |
| The underground nature of the Christian conversion movement has made numbers impossible to determine accurately. | |
| Estimates range from 300,000 to 500,000 by various sources. | |
| Though these statistics cannot be independently verified, converts and pastors both in and out of Iran say the movement is strong and widely spread. Some converts have also been reported to travel to neighboring Armenia to become baptized. | |
| In Germany, hundreds have found a surrogate home in Martens’ church. An exuberant and lively pastor who speaks conversational Farsi and has new refugees appearing at his expanding church on Sundays, he has garnered a large following. In 2012, he was named “Pastor of the Year” because of his work with Iranian refugees. | |
| “It is my impression that there is really a kind of Christian awakening in Iran at the moment with pretty large dimensions,” he says. “People who come to us have already had these contacts with house churches and have had to flee because of that.” | |
| Indeed, the spread of Christianity to Muslim-born Iranians has not gone unnoticed by the Islamic republic. Churches have come under pressure to stop their Farsi-speaking services, are routinely monitored and required to submit lists of members. At least 6,500 Bibles have been confiscated and security cameras installed outside churches, according to US state department international religious freedom reports for 2011 and 2012. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic republic of Iran, has noted in reports from both 2013 and 2014 that since June 2010, more than 300 Christians have been arrested, many on vague security crimes in which they are accused of threatening national security and the country. | |
| Afsaneh, a soft-spoken woman in her 40s who is part of Martens’ congregation, says she was arrested because of her conversion and heavily abused in jail. Like other converts in this story, Afsaneh asked that only her first name be used to protect her identity. She was only freed after using her property deeds as collateral, after which she quickly escaped the country. | |
| Afsaneh says she struggled to accept Islam for most of her life but ultimately and fundamentally disagreed with the religion. Her cousin, a convert, secretly introduced her to Christianity in which she found a better, spiritual fit. “I felt so relaxed,” she says after attending Bible study sessions held in the privacy of her house church. “I felt safe. I was so excited about Christmas that I put up a tree in my home and work.” Her public displays meant closer eyes and soon both her and her cousin were arrested receiving more than 70 lashes in jail. | |
| “I want Iran to have respect for my perspective, about what religion I choose,” she says from the church basement where refugees gather after Sunday mass for a communal lunch. “Not just to tell me that I have to be a Muslim.” | |
| In the last two years, two high profile cases involving the jailing of converts have also reached international media: Pastor Youcef Nadarkhani, who was released from prison after being tried for apostasy, and Saeed Abedini, an Iranian-American pastor,currently serving jail time for helping create the house-church movement in Iran. | |
| As a result of the crackdown, converts like Afsaneh have opted to emigrate abroad rather than risk harassment or prison. Of the dozens of converts interviewed for this story, a majority recount how the shuttering of the house churches where they gather to worship and the arrests of fellow church members prompted them to flee Iran. | |
| A 2012 European court of justice ruling granting asylum rights to targets of religious persecution has also spurred the arrival of Iranian émigrés in Europe. The court rejected the argument that Christians could safely bring their faith underground stating that the right to worship or practice one’s faith in public is what constitutes full freedom of religion, a principle upheld by the European convention on human rights. | |
| Faith and family | Faith and family |
| Across town from Martens’ church sits the unassuming Haus Gotteshilfe church or “House of God’s Help,” nestled into Berlin’s Neukolln district, home to a large percentage of Berlin’s Middle Eastern immigrants. | |
| Deaconess Gotz’s congregation of Iranian converts has turned her small and humble church into a bustling center overflowing with fragrant Iranian tea and Farsi language Bibles. The onslaught began when she was introduced to an Iranian woman named Nadereh who came to her and asked to be baptized. One day Nadereh, who has lived in Germany for 20 years, brought five other converts with her and the numbers continued to grow until Gotz’s congregation was doubled. | |
| Gotz has become a sort of maternal figure for the refugees who are often disowned by Muslim families back home. Her maternal instinct to protect and care for them has earned her a special place in their new, strange lives away from home. | |
| “They say you are our mother, our second mother,” she says. “They’re looking for a homeland.” | |
| One refugee who has been almost completely cut off from her own family is Mojgan. | |
| “One day, I will kill you because you’ve changed,” her sister back in Iran told her. “They hate me. They don’t want to see me anymore.” | |
| She is especially close to Gotz, though her struggles with learning German makes their relationship slightly challenging. Along with her with teenage daughter, Mojgan has been part of this congregation since she arrived in Berlin less than a year ago after first fleeing from Iran to Malaysia. | |
| Like other converts interviewed, Mojgan reported seeing a vision of Christ during a moment of desperation which led to her conversion. As her daughter lay sick at home with a rising fever, Mojgan, with the help of a Christian neighbor, began praying. | |
| “I said Jesus, Moses, Mohammed, all of you, help me. If each of you is real, come help me.” | |
| It was after this, she says, that Christ appeared to her. When she checked on her daughter, the fever had disappeared. “It was like she was in a freezer,” she says. | |
| They both converted and began attending an underground house church but the urge to share their faith publicly was too tempting. | |
| “I was scared for my daughter, she says. “She’s young and she’s a fighter, she couldn’t keep quiet. She fought with Muslims and wanted to show them that Mohammed is not the holy prophet. I was scared for her and I thought - I think it’s better to run away from this country.” | |
| After the church was dismantled by authorities and arrests took place, she left Iran for Malaysia, where she had worked intermittently as a guide for Iranian tourists. But troubles from back home followed her to the southeast Asian country where Islam is the predominant religion. Iranian authorities frequented the church were refugees attended and filmed members, she says. This prompted her to flee to Berlin, where she has been waiting for her asylum case to be processed ever since. | |
| “I’m missing my family,” she says. “But I have something else, something very big and great - I have Jesus as my father.” | |
| Emmanuel, a 20-year-old refugee who arrived in Germany a few months ago from Iran also left because of his inability to keep his faith private. Emmanuel is his western name and while he refuses to speak about details that led to his escape fearing for the safety of family back home, he says he was first introduced to Christianity as a teenager and the religion ultimately soothed a difficult upbringing. “Our family was really separated,” he says. “In our home, there was no peace or relaxed moments, but Jesus and Christianity brought peace into our family.” | |
| A member of the growing network of underground house church for years, as his interest in Christianity grew, his activities, which included publicly proselytizing, raised eyebrows from disapproving relatives. | |
| “I knew they couldn’t do anything, but they could tell other people who could do something,” he says, referring to Iran’s paramilitary volunteer force known as the Basij. “If your name comes up anywhere, anywhere that it shouldn’t, then they will keep watching you.” | |
| Emmanuel’s vocal declarations of his faith raised the interest of Iran’s government and soon “they intervened,” he says. | |
| For Mojgan, Emmanuel and other Iranian refugees, Germany has presented a new set of different, yet overwhelming, challenges in an unfamiliar country so different from the one they’ve left behind. | |
| The first step toward asylum is a grueling interview process, when a judge challenges them to prove the genuineness of their faith. | |
| Church leaders cry foul, claiming the line of questioning is often archaic, spanning obscure Christian history like the Crusades or doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church about which converts often have no clue. | |
| “The kind of measurements they use is sometimes crazy,” Martens says. “In many cases they really have little idea of Christianity and they have no idea what we’re teaching.” | |
| Nele Allenberg, an immigration lawyer with the Evangelical Church in Germany, or EKD, a collective federation of church bodies in Germany, says courts should examine more than just asylum seekers’ initial motives, but how they are actually living their beliefs in their daily lives - church attendance, sharing of their faith and adherence to Christian principles, she says. | |
| After noticing the influx of immigrant Christian converts coming to Germany, Allenberg and her colleagues prepared a pamphlet for EKD member churches on how to deal with Iranian as well as Afghan, Turkish, Syrian and Vietnamese asylum seekers who are filling up empty churches as new Christians. | |
| The pamphlet covers such issues as court hearings, deportation, probation periods before baptism and validity of conversions. | |
| Before they get called for the interviews, a process which has been delayed extensively due to a large influx of migrants, they must also survive in the cramped asylum camps which are often converted schools or army barracks. Depression and other psychological ailments are not uncommon among asylum seekers sharing these bleak and sometimes unsanitary spaces with strangers from a host of different countries. | |
| After the suicide of an Iranian asylum seeker who was found hanged in his apartment, Iranian refugees mobilized protesting the unsatisfactory conditions. Some in Bavaria responded by sewing their mouths shut. In Munich protesters called a hunger strike. | |
| Many Iranians Christian converts face harassment and attacks from Muslim refugees whom share their temporary living quarters. Forbidden to work, travel too far outside the camp, and with no formal opportunities to learn German, they remain isolated. | |
| Religion and the German churches become essential places of socializing and interaction but even here the pressures of home cannot be forgotten. | |
| Lurking among the joyful baptism ceremonies and shared after-Mass meals, however, is another, complicated challenge: an atmosphere laden with overwhelming suspicion they've carried from Iran : fear of moles with ties to the Iranian government. | |
| “I don’t feel safe in the church, between those people,” Emmanuel tells me over coffee one day. “Maybe someone inside the church is one of them. I have no idea who they are.” | |
| The refugees are careful to keep their distance from each other, never revealing information about their cases or details of their lives back home. | |
| Suspicions extend to outsiders like me. Before sharing their stories they demanded paperwork and asked about my religious beliefs to make sure I wasn't a government proxy. | |
| They've gained the right to practice their faith, but can't shake the pervasive fear of persecution instilled in them over a lifetime. In some ways, freedom has evaded them, even 3,000 miles away. | |
| The credibility of conversions | The credibility of conversions |
| Pastors, missionaries and the refugees themselves admit that some converts escaping difficult social and economic pressures in Iran use Christianity as a way to legitimize asylum, knowing that they won't be sent back. Some exploit religion as a means to receive status in Germany after being rejected for asylum on political grounds. | |
| “There were occasions where we were very deeply disappointed,” says Reverend Hugo Gevers who works with Iranian converts in Leipzig at St Luke’s Church, where the congregation is one-third former Iranian Muslim. “We were supporting them for years, they had the court case and a positive answer and the same day they separated from us.” | |
| But Gevers and other church leaders are also quick to point out that retention rates are high and the number of faux converts remain low. Some pastors have even adopted strict protocol that can last several months to weed out non-believers. Indeed, the small percentage who do come for paperwork often end up staying – a combination of disillusionment with Iran and the loneliness of refugee life pushes them to seek out prayer, they say. | |
| “There are some people who obviously come to us hoping for papers. But it’s very interesting - when they come to our baptismal classes, their hearts open,” Martens says. “I say ‘Perhaps some of you are here for papers, but I tell you the Holy Spirit will work.’” | |
| At Haus Gotteshilfe, Mojgan refutes the idea that refugees may be participating in some sort of divine lie. “We have so many people here who already have their passports, but still they come and will continue to come because of what they know in their heart.” | |
| With the determination of the credibility of their faith virtually impossible to determine, pastors as well as fellow converts prefer not to judge. | |
| Sadegh Sepehri, an ethnic Iranian Reverend, former Muslim and once prominent figure in the Iranian Bible society in Tehran who fled to Germany 25 years ago doesn't focus on the motivation of converts, a difficult and impossible judg | |
| e | |
| ment he says he leaves up to God. | |
| “God, you know them better,” he says. “I will tell them the word of Salvation but how they react is up to You and them.” Sepehri has baptized hundreds of Iranians as a missionary from the American Presbyterian mission agency, and can spot a non-believer better than most pastors now dealing with the changing nature of their congregations. | |
| “They are coming here, and receiving good things from Christianity,” he says warily as his Sunday service begins with Christian hymns in Farsi. Soon images of Jesus will light up the overhead projector screen in the prayer room of the Bethlehem Evangelical Reformed Community church, host to Sepehri’s congregation as well as Christian refugees from West Africa. | |
| “Even if they are not accepting Christianity, in their whole life, they will know that it was the church and Jesus helping them.” | |
| This story was made possible through a grant from the International Reporting Project. | |