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5 min read

Searching for purpose landed me in an Iranian court

Hassan tells how changing his belief is perceived as a threat to Iran’s national security.

Belle Tindall

Belle is the staff writer at Seen & Unseen and co-host of its Re-enchanting podcast.

A man walks through a dark alley, looking to one side, illuminated only by roof lights.
An alley in Zanjan, Iran.
Bahram Bayat on Unsplash.

Hassan is Iranian and a Christian; now living in the United Kingdom, he tells Belle Tindall his story. His name has been changed to protect his identity.  

Can you tell me your story, tell me how you became a Christian and what life in Iran was like as a result of that decision? 

Yeah, actually, I was born in Iran and in Muslim family. I grew up as a Muslim, and then at the age of sixteen, I became a Christian. I was questioning whether God exists or not, asking what the purpose of my life was, the purpose of the whole world, in fact. And, if there is a God, why are there so many injustices in this world, and around me?  

I went to Islamic theology first, because that’s what I knew. But, it left me feeling empty.  

And I remember, one day, I cried out to God, I said – ‘I don't know if you exist or not, I don’t know if you can hear my voice or not. But if you exist, and if you're hearing my voice, please talk to me directly.’ 

I was really desperate.  

A few months after that prayer, I was alone at home and suddenly a crucifixion appeared in my front of my eyes. I had no knowledge about Jesus’ death on the cross or anything like that. But that was it.  

I didn’t know that the Christian church was being persecuted at this point. And I remember, in the early years, learning that I couldn’t attend any church service because they weren’t able to accept Muslim converts. But I just couldn’t ignore this very strong voice in my mind and heart, telling me that only Jesus could save me. So, I had very deep peace in my heart. 

And am I right in thinking that you were arrested for your Christian faith?  

Yes, intelligence police came to my home one morning, showing me a paper that permitted them to search my flat. They didn’t actually tell me that it was because of Christianity, they just searched everything, took photos, and seized anything that was related to Christianity.  

Then they told me – ‘this is happening because you’re a Christian’, and they sent me to court. But, during my trial, they presented me with different charges: undermining the government and posing a threat to national security.  

So, how long were you in prison for? 

I as in solitary confinement for a month. But they couldn’t keep me in prison because years before I had gone through the process of becoming legally recognised as a Christian convert – when it wasn’t illegal. So, they had to release me. I also had human rights organisations putting pressure on the government to release me, they were working on my case. So, after a month I was released on bail.  

And is that when you came to the UK?  

Yes, because even when I was released, I wasn’t safe. They would call me all the time, they would call me in for interrogation constantly – they wanted to show me that they were still in control, that they knew everything. I was being monitored always. And so, mentally and emotionally, it was very difficult for me to stay there. I spoke with some leaders in my church who told me that it would be wise for me to leave Iran. It wasn’t safe for me; I didn’t have a choice.  

And how has your experience been, here in the UK?  

To be honest, to begin with, it was really difficult. Because of the torture that I had endured, I had a lot of trauma – and when I came here, I had nothing. I was learning a new culture, a new language. And I carried this trauma here with me. Spiritually, mentally, emotionally, it’s been very hard for me to be here.  

It was very dark.  

Can I ask you, in light of everything that you’ve experienced, what you think of the recent comments about the church ‘aiding bogus asylum claims’? 

I was a refugee. And when I arrived, my interviewer was a very kind lady. To get my immigration status only took two or three weeks, but that could have been because my story was already quite well-known, so there was evidence that I had been persecuted because of my Christian faith. My case had been on the internet.  

And I understand that some people aren’t honest about being Christians – and that would make it difficult for people like me. It’s tricky. I don’t want to judge anybody, because I understand, I’ve seen the other side.  

And it is a challenge.  

But I feel positive that even if somebody hasn’t been to church in Iran, it’s a good opportunity to share the gospel with them here in the UK. It’s good news that they’re here – even if they’ve come for a different reason.  

But I really do think that people are coming because they’re persecuted. They’ve been through so much. It’s hard for the Home Office, but the church have an important role to play – to support the people who have been persecuted, who have never before had a place to learn about or worship God. Those who have never had the freedom to express their faith, or live in their faith. I think the church has a really, really important job - to support them and stand behind them and speak for them.  

Read the stories of Iranians in the UK

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4 min read

Remembering red on red

The cultural revolution's factions have a disconcertingly contemporary feel.

Simon Burton-Jones

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A Chinese stamp depicts a map of the country from which people march holding a little red book
Long Live the Overall Victory of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, stamp, 1968.
Public domain, via Wikimedia.

Modern era China has suffered human loss on an unimaginable scale.  The Taiping Rebellion in the mid-nineteenth century cost over 20 million lives, more or less the global total from the Great War of 1914-18.  The vicious Japanese occupation in the 1930s led to 15 million Chinese deaths.  The famine begun in 1958, precipitated by the Great Leap Forward, caused around 40 million deaths.   

For one nation, however large, these are appalling losses.  By contrast, the fatalities in the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) amounted to one million or more.  But the impact of this communist insurgency within a communist state is profoundly felt today, for its generation is still alive.  The trauma of those years has wounded the bodies and minds of millions; people who are unsure how to come to terms with it because of the uncertainty of what can be safely talked about.   

Mao’s incitement to younger people to turn on their teachers and elders in vitriolic criticism and violent attack, including torture and murder, was an attempt to re-boot the revolution by exterminating elements of western capitalism and traditional Chinese authority – the so-called Four Olds of ideas, culture, customs and habits.  The humiliation of teachers and parents was profoundly at odds with the Confucian culture of respect for elders, and it was embedded in young minds whose frontal lobes had not fully developed and where empathy was unformed.  The ensuing violence, pain and hardship was sickening, encompassing millions. 

Many of the bereaved and injured, the perpetrators and the victims, are still alive.  Some bury their memories as a way of coping; others search for meaning, but run up against an authoritarian government with new digital tools that make totalitarianism possible.  In her book Red Memory (Faber and Faber, 2024), Tania Branigan has produced a masterpiece of literature.  Interviewing survivors, bystanders and instigators of the violence, she has produced a history of their guilt and trauma, while reflecting on the uses of memory.   

The collateral from this is human rights abuses on an industrial scale, to ensure there is no opposition to the CCP as the true expression of being Chinese.   

The word remember is coded with meaning.  When we piece together our memories of the past, we re-member them and the members are frequently not put back together again in the way an event happened.  This becomes more pronounced with the passage of time and the known tendency for people to make themselves more central to a story than they were at the time.  We also narrate the past in ways that burnish our reputation and preserve our conscience.  The Cultural Revolution has been reassembled in fragments; there is, and there will be, no initiative like South Africa’s Truth and Reconciliation Commission.  People can make of it what they want; but without justice, the losses fester. 

The lack of a shared public memory also means the Cultural Revolution can be made to service any goal.  Detached from the moorings of truth, it becomes a malleable symbol.  Xi Jinping suffered himself.  His father was purged, denounced as a counter-revolutionary, and sent to hard work in rural Shaanxi Province.  This is his creation myth, and how it made a man out of him.  But there are other lessons to be taken from that time which he has strategically and wilfully ignored.  The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) who followed Mao were determined that never again would one man develop a cult of personality like his, by ensuring limited presidential terms.  Xi Jinping has abolished this limit and introduced Xi Jinping Thought in an echo of Mao’s Little Red Book.  If there is one thing Xi has taken from his experience, it is the terror that chaos unleashes and the need to avoid it at all costs.  The collateral from this is human rights abuses on an industrial scale, to ensure there is no opposition to the CCP as the true expression of being Chinese.

Idolatry is much harder to identify in our own culture, yet it is here we need to do this work

The cult of Mao was idolatrous, usurping Christ.  Jesus said he would divide families: ‘father against son…mother against daughter…mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law’.  This divisiveness was located in his claim to be the way, the truth and the life.  He did not seek to divide families, but knew his claims would do so.  Mao intentionally turned families against themselves - the foundation of a civil society - to ensure loyalty to him would not be compromised.          

It is easy to identify this several decades on and at the safe distance of several thousand miles.  Idolatry is much harder to identify in our own culture, yet it is here we need to do this work.  It is also sloppy to make links between the ideological fervour and purity of Maoism and today’s social media culture.  There is no direct link, despite some claims.  But the story of how groups coalesce righteously and are manipulated into ever more extreme forms of factional purity has a disconcertingly contemporary feel. 

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