Interview
Creed
Freedom of Belief
Middle East
S&U interviews
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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Confessions of an atheist philosopher. Part 6: making the leap

In her series’ final article, philosopher Stefani Ruper offers a new vision we all need.

Stefani Ruper

Stefani Ruper is a philosopher specialising in the ethics of belief and Associate Member of Christ Church College, Oxford. She received her PhD from the Theology & Religion faculty at the University of Oxford in 2020.

A skydiver in a space pressure shoot leaps from a capsule above the earth.
Felix Baumgartner leap set the record for freefall parachuting.
Red Bull Stratos.

Faith is irrational. Faith is against evidence. Faith is a threat to progress. Faith will bring about the downfall of civilization. 

I used to think this, and I wasn’t alone.  

In 2004 Sam Harris wrote that faith  

“allows otherwise normal human beings to reap the fruits of madness and consider them holy.”  

This quote appears in his book The End of Faith, which was on the New York Times bestseller list for 33 weeks. 

Fellow pop atheist AC Grayling says that faith  

“directly controverts canons of intellectual integrity…’Faith’ is not a respectable or admirable thing; having been so long paraded as a virtue and worthy of respect, the truth is otherwise… it is irresponsible, lazy, and too often dangerous.” 

The real danger 

When I was about 20, I realised that I had dismissed faith as irrational without ever engaging it. I had prided myself on open-mindedness while at the same time refusing to hear what people of faith had to say. This struck me as deeply hypocritical, so I went to seminary. I asked religious people about faith. I studied what theologians and philosophers said about it. I did this for about twelve years. 

In this time, I confirmed my earlier belief that there are extreme examples of irrationality and close-mindedness in religion. Of course there are! But there are extreme examples of irrationality and close-mindedness in secularism, too. The danger isn’t “faith.” The danger is what I used to do: over-simplifying and reducing one another to easy targets so we can tear each other down. 

Faith, I now know, looks very different to many people. Some forms of it are healthier than others.  Some are toxic.  

But after more than twelve years of study, I’ve come to believe a specific way of defining or practicing faith is not just acceptable for our society but crucial. I consider it the answer to many of our shared needs--especially for more love, generosity, justice, resilience, progress, and hope.    

It's this: 

a choice. 

Faith is a choice. 

Our society is unique among all societies that have ever existed. It is the first society where we must choose: to trust and believe just a little bit, or to distrust and believe nothing at all.   

This is what “don’t believe” looks like:  

Distrust. Stick to the “bare facts” of physical reality and science. Live as though there is no possibility of any dimensions existing beyond material reality as we understand it today. 

There is no Creator, no ultimate love, no ultimate home. There is only the here and now. When you die, nothing happens.  

I subscribed to this option for thirty years because I thought it necessary to be loyal to the truth. I thought that being a good person meant resisting the temptations of faith. I felt proud of myself for bravely accepting the emptiness of the world. But it was poor consolation. 

Another reason I followed this option was because I—like most people in our culture—had a deeply rooted habit of suspicion and distrust. Authorities of all kinds have so routinely deceived and disappointed us that most of us live habitually expecting to be attacked, hurt, let down, duped, used, manipulated, and misled. We must always expect there’s a trick behind any promise. Every offering has a catch. We subconsciously live by the slogan “it’s too good to be true.”  

This predisposes us to experiencing a specific kind of harm: when we anticipate being hurt, we often hurt ourselves first so that we get to be in control of the pain. For the first thirty years of my spiritual journey, part of my resistance to God was that I was so afraid of finding out He didn’t exist I never let myself take seriously the possibility that He might.  

Here’s what “believe” looks like: 

Trust. Take a look at your options and say “yes,” to the better one, the one rich in possibility and hope and light. 

Embrace the possibility that there are dimensions of reality beyond our imagining that we cannot see or touch. Embrace the possibility that your story may be a part of some larger story. Embrace the possibility that what you do matters ultimately, and is a part of the great unfolding of a narrative beyond your comprehension.  

Do this with lightness. Have a bold vision, but let a part of that boldness be its ability to change and grow. Trust the community of spiritual seekers all around the world. Hold all your opinions as hypotheses, and seek to refine them in community with others as different from you as possible. 

Open yourself to the possibility that you might be able to experience the love of God and walk into greater peace, joy, resilience, and generosity than previously.  

Responsible faith 

Harris and Grayling say faith is belief against evidence. 

However: faith can be deeply evidentiary. Done right, faith never contradicts evidence or quality reasoning. Indeed, to me, faith means being loyal to every scrap of evidence, including any that God may provide us, and constantly revising my views of everything.  

There are two kinds of evidence for transcendent beliefs: intellectual evidence, which includes historical, archaeological, and philosophical reasons to believe (or not to believe), and experiential evidence, which comes from believing in God and seeing what happens. 

For each of us, experiential evidence is personal, but we can, and should, always talk about our experiences with others. We should get feedback, compare, and learn from one another. I consider my experiences to be data points for God, but I’m open to being incorrect. 

Faith of the sort I’m advocating doesn’t mean putting your head in the sand. It means walking simultaneously with trust and with your eyes wide open. It means embracing your own limitations and learning to delight in being proved wrong or revising your perspective.   

 The obligation to have faith 

Many people come to faith in God through a major religious experience. They have a sudden shift. They go from skeptic to Believer with a capital “B” seemingly overnight. 

That is not how it’s worked for me. I decided to see if I could believe. When I first set out to cultivate faith, I didn’t believe anything at all. 

Why did I do it? 

I had one very specific reason: it would make the world a better place. 

I already knew that belief in God was reasonable, and that God might exist. I already knew that I could get evidence for God if I dared to believe a little bit first.

But what convinced me to finally try believing was an argument William James makes in his essay Is Life Worth Living? He says: 

if there is something you can believe in that is reasonable, and that will make you either a happier or better person, or both,   

then you are not just licensed, but obliged to believe it. 

Not just licensed, but obliged. Believing in God was not just reasonable but would also make me more of all the things I always wanted to be: more joyful, more peaceful, more generous, more resilient. 

Thus, I was facing a dual realization: 

  1.  God might be real, and 

  1. Trying to see if I could believe—that is, intentionally opening myself to God’s potential presence in my life—would be an act both of exploring truth as well as making me a better person. 

 Put like this, the next step for me was obvious: 

Do it. 

Choose faith. Choose trust. Take a chance on God, and see what happens.  

That was eleven months ago now, and I can honestly say it was the best thing I’ve ever done. My belief is far from certain, but it doesn’t have to be—indeed, in some ways it shouldn’t be. 

 I just keep saying yes to trust, and my heart is lighter and more free than I ever imagined possible. 

Taking a chance on God 

The secular poet Mary Oliver once famously asked us: 

 “What will you do with your one wild and precious life?” 

What will I do? What will you do? 

If faith means taking a chance on God and seeing what happens – and in doing so stepping into lives of greater peace, joy, resilience, and generosity, together – 

What are any of us waiting for? 

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