Iran protests: an Iranian believer's perspective

I was born in Iran in 1980, after the Islamic Revolution, and I did not witness 1979 with my own eyes. But I grew up under the fruit of it. I lived through the Iran–Iraq war years, when the nation was taught to endure shortages, silence questions, and treat dissent as treason.

I came to the United Kingdom because of my father’s academic studies, and later God showed mercy to me, a sinner and saved my soul, and so I settled here as a Christian. I did not arrive as a refugee, but I carry the weight of what that system did to my people, and what it still does.

Speaking plainly: Iran became a police state. It learned to govern by fear. To raise concerns about the Islamic regime, publicly or privately, was to invite surveillance, interrogation, prison, or worse. And to turn away from Islam, openly, was not treated as a matter of conscience, but as a threat to the state’s identity. When a government makes itself the guardian of a false and evil ideology, it cannot tolerate free speech, and it will never tolerate conversion to Christ.