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Freedom of Belief
Gaza
Middle East
Migration
7 min read

What the Gaza conflict and the asylum seeker row have in common

Iran’s persecution drives its Christians here. This is their story.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Rows of soldiers march away from the camera, two in the back row turn their heads back.
Officers at Iran’s Sacred Defence Week parade, 2023.
Tasnim News Agency, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Israel-Gaza war and the recent row between the church and the UK government over asylum seekers don’t seem on the surface to have much to do with each other. But they do have a common denominator: Iran.  

Iran may not have directly sponsored Hamas’ infamous attacks on Israel on October 7th but without Iranian support for Hamas, it is unthinkable that they would have happened. Iran remains on the list of those countries who sponsor terrorist organisations across the Middle East, such as the Houthis in Yemen, and are widely regarded as a force for instability and undermining democracy across the region.  

It is also one of the most repressive nations on earth. It counts in the top ten of countries where freedom of religion or belief are restricted. According to the Open Doors’ World Watch List, list, Iran is the ninth most dangerous country to be a Christian in 2024, just behind Sudan and ahead of Afghanistan. With 1.2 million Christians in the country, they make up just 1.4 per cent of Iran’s population, and yet, they are considered to be a risk to national security and a means by which the West is seeking to undermine the Iranian government. This inevitably makes life incredibly hard for the Christians who call Iran home; to be a recognised Christian means to live your life as a second-class citizen, under constant surveillance, and enduring endless discrimination. 

Given that Iran is hardly a friend of the UK, the USA and its allies, you might have thought western governments would do all they could to support people seeking to escape the country, or a movement that draws people away from the influence of the mullahs. Which makes the attack on asylum seekers seeking baptism in UK churches all the more perplexing. 

Over the past week, Seen & Unseen has spoken to several Iranian Christians in the UK. These are definitely not bogus Christians. Some came to Christianity in Iran after a Muslim upbringing. Others were born into the small Christian community in Iran. Some are training to be ordained in the Church of England, and many of them have been imprisoned for their faith in Iran before coming to the UK. 

“The persecution that Christians are facing in Iran is absolutely real. Does that mean that some of them are leaving the country? Yes. I had to. I’m here. I had to leave my home.” 

One man, Mehdi (his name has been changed to protect his identity) became a Christian in Iran at the age of 18. His older brother converted to the new faith first and Mehdi, having seen his big brother struggling with violence, anger, depression and drugs, was curious about the complete and immediate change in his brother’s life. That curiosity led him to believe in Jesus. It became immediately obvious to these two brothers that their new faith was going to make their life complicated; and at the age of 20 and 26, they found themselves being arrested for the first time.  

He explains what drew him, and many others to Christianity. “It’s the same for many Iranians. There were people around us who are who were, and still are, dealing with lots of difficulties because of the economic situation, because of the oppression and corruption of the government. It feels like there’s no hope, no solution. The only solution can be found in the hidden places. It’s Jesus. He is the hope of a new life.” 

He tells us how Iran sees Christians: “They believe that Christianity is a weapon of Western countries, with a long-term plan to convert Islamic countries like Iran so that they can alter the culture and take the power.” 

After years in prison, much of it in solitary confinement in degrading conditions and yet more threats from the authorities, he was forced to leave Iran. He is now living in the UK with his wife, and at the midway point in his training to be a priest.  

We wanted to know what he thought of the comments concerning the church and ‘bogus asylum claims’: 

“The violation of human rights, the right to both free speech and freedom of belief, in Iran is real, it’s true, it’s happening. The persecution that Christians are facing in Iran is absolutely real. Does that mean that some of them are leaving the country? Yes. I had to. I’m here. I had to leave my home. And there aren’t enough legal routes, there aren’t enough ways to seek asylum in countries like the UK.  

So, it’s true that Christians are leaving Iran. I’m one of them. And I was incredibly lucky, I got here safely and securely.”  

Another convert, Hassan (also a false name to protect identity) while at home in Iran, went though the usual teenage angst, wondering about his place in the world, and whether God really exists. He delved into Islamic theology but says it left him ‘feeling empty’.  

After a few months of praying that God would somehow reveal himself, Hassan had a dream of a figure on a cross. This was the beginning of a journey that led him to faith in Jesus Christ. Hassan talks about his experience with the immigration system: “It’s hard for the Home Office, but the church has 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.”  

They are habitually religious people, so are not naturally drawn to atheism or agnosticism. On arriving in the UK, which they assume to be a Christian country, they naturally want to explore the faith of the country that they have arrived in. 

An Iranian refugee Darbina, unlike the others, was born as a Christian into a Christian family. Yet she speaks of how Christians are persecuted in Iran. She says they are treated like second class citizens, unable to sell food because they are regarded as unclean, unable to enter many professions because they are Christian. She describes the open surveillance of Christians. Her father, a pastor, was imprisoned for ‘acting against national security’ by organising small groups and illegal gatherings. Eventually Daria herself was imprisoned for a year. She experienced degrading treatment as a woman in a predominantly male prison, and frequently had to listen to the torture of others.  

There is another common story. Many Iranians leave Iran not yet as Christians, but seeking a better life from an economically depressed nation and disillusioned with the form of Shia Islam found in the country. They are habitually religious people, so are not naturally drawn to atheism or agnosticism. On arriving in the UK, which they assume to be a Christian country, they naturally want to explore the faith of the country that they have arrived in, even when they find the UK church more lukewarm than they expected. Of course, there are a number of Iranian Christians already in the UK such as Mehdi, Nasir and Daria, ready to help them discover a faith which has become vital to them. This would seem a much more common explanation of Iranian Christians wanting baptism, then simply a cynical attempt to manipulate the asylum system.  

Of course, there are Iranian and migrants from other countries claiming false conversion as a means of advancing their case for asylum. No-one doubts that. Yet the problem has been exaggerated. A recent Times report found that since January 2023 only 28 cases were heard at the Upper Tribunal Court in which a claimant cited conversion to Christianity as a reason to be granted asylum – in other words, just one per cent of cases heard. And of those 28, seven appeals were approved, 13 were dismissed and new hearings were ordered in eight cases. Hardly an ‘industrial scale’ operation. Yet there is a great deal of evidence of numerous people like those we spoke to, who have genuinely converted to Christianity, either in Iran itself, or in the west.   

More significant than the comparatively small number of fake claims, is evidence of a genuine religious revival amongst Iranian Muslims, drawn to Christianity as a more attractive option than the oppressive form of Islam they find in their homeland. Attacks on Iranian and other migrants, with the implication that all Iranians seeking conversion are bogus, or at least feeding suspicion of such claims to conversion is undermining exactly the kind of movement that you would have thought that the British government would be wanting to encourage. 

If there is something of a spiritual revival taking place amongst Iranian Muslims then this should be something to be celebrated rather than penalised or tarred with the brush of deception. We owe it to these people who have risked their lives to find a better way of living and believing.  

Read the stories of Iranian Christians in the UK

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Loneliness
6 min read

Why do we feel so lonely?

Re-reading some classics of English literature leads Graham Tomlin to wonder what lies behind our epidemic of loneliness.

Graham Tomlin

Graham is the Director of the Centre for Cultural Witness and a former Bishop of Kensington.

Individual underneath a galaxy of stars

These days I can’t seem to avoid the spectre of loneliness. Bob Geldof recently described Sinead O’Connor as ‘full of a terrible loneliness’ in the weeks before she died. Elon Musk, who owns Twitter, one of the world’s greatest social networks, was recently described as a cutting a lonely figure. Even more widely, over a quarter of all Londoners say they often or always feel lonely - and that in a city where you can’t get away from people – all 8 million of them.

Loneliness is an epidemic these days. In the UK we even have a Minister for Loneliness and a Department of Government offering ‘Loneliness Engagement Fund’ grants for groups coming up with good ideas to combat it. Loneliness, as Roger Bretherton writes, causes psychological and social damage and is one of the main threats to mental health in contemporary life. I would hazard a guess that if you’re reading this there are times you feel isolated, and would love to have a greater sense of community where you live, or richer friendships. If you don’t, then count yourself fortunate.

Underneath our immediate sense of isolation, our social unease, the ache in the soul that comes with feeling out of connection with others, lies a deeper sense of cosmic loneliness.

During the pandemic, looking around for books that would shed some light on that strange experience of isolation as so many did, I re-read two novels: Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe published in 1719, and Joseph Conrad’s Nostromo, published in 1904. In both stories, people get stranded on deserted islands. Somehow lockdown didn’t seem that different.

Everyone knows the story of Robinson Crusoe. You might have thought that being the sole survivor of a shipwreck, alone on a remote island, would lead to a crisis of loneliness and self pity. Well, he does have moments when he reflects on the possibility that he might die in that desolate place, and remarks how ‘the tears would run plentifully down my face when I made these reflections.’ But the self pity doesn't last long. He goes on to ask himself the question of why he alone was saved out of all crew of the ship that foundered. He sees some kind of providential design in this - that he has been saved, not just by chance, but for some wider purpose, which gives him a sense of comfort. In fact, the novel is the tale of a kind of spiritual awakening, as he gradually sees in his story something of the hand of God mysteriously guiding and preserving him through his trials. Seeing this enigmatic hand directing his affairs, and discerning some kind of purpose in his isolation, Crusoe sets about the tasks of building a kind of small civilization on his island, constructing increasingly sophisticated shelters, planting crops, capturing and taming animals, mapping the island, until his final rescue. He is alone (until Man Friday appears of course) but strangely not alone.

In Conrad’s Nostromo, it turns out very different. This is a story of attempts to protect a hoard of silver from revolutionaries in the troubled (and fictional) South American republic of Costaguana. In the course of trying to hide the treasure, alongside Nostromo, the main figure in the story, the politically ambitious and romantic journalist Martin Decoud, also finds himself stranded on a deserted island, albeit with the load of valuable silver for company. His experience however is totally different. He has no such belief in providence and so for him, the isolation bears more heavily: “solitude appeared like a great void, and the silence of the gulf like a tense, thin cord to which he hung suspended by both hands, without fear, without surprise, without any sort of emotion whatsoever…” Unable to bear the isolation, the aimlessness of his life on the island, and the apparent failure of his plans and projects, he fills his pockets with silver ingots from the treasure, rows in a small dinghy a short way out from the shore, shoots himself with a revolver and falls overboard, sinking slowly to the bottom of the sea. And so, as Conrad describes it, in a cold, yet superb turn of phrase: “the brilliant Don Martin disappeared without a trace, swallowed up in the immense indifference of things.”

Even though they both faced isolation and loneliness, the fates of these two characters are very different. One is a story of spiritual growth, learning, meaningful activity and ultimate rescue. The other is a tragedy of lost hope and potential. It touches the heart, yet remains a tragedy.

Is it surprising that when we tell ourselves that we are alone in the cosmos, that there is no-one there to hear our cries or heartfelt longings, that the aching hole in the universe finds its way into our own hearts?

Of course, both are novels not historical episodes, yet the two books, separated by nearly 200 years, operate in very different frameworks. The first operates in a world which assumes a kind of providential ordering of things. The working of a divine hand of providence is, as Crusoe (and presumably Defoe) realises, hard to discern and difficult to distinguish in any one moment, and so leads many to doubt it is there at all. Belief in providence has always been a choice - an act of faith rather than a scientifically proved theory. And yet the story is framed within the overall belief that in the strange twists and turns of life there is a deeper divine order that leads towards a distinct purpose of good and which makes human activity directed towards that purpose meaningful.

The other story has lost that sense of divine order, and is left only with the “immense indifference of things.” This is a world in which there is nothing beyond what we can see and feel, no objective purpose, direction or goal other than that dreamed up by us. Human activity, in this case, the search for wealth and riches, seems strangely pointless. All that is left is human love and relationship and when that becomes impossible, due to enforced loneliness, there seems little point left to life.

Richard Dawkins famously wrote: ‘the universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is at bottom no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.’ For the moment I'll leave to one side the question of whether the universe does point in that direction, but either way, if we tell ourselves that story, as we have so often been doing for the last couple of centuries, is it surprising that often we feel dreadfully alone? Is it surprising that when we tell ourselves that we are alone in the cosmos, that there is no-one there to hear our cries or heartfelt longings, that the aching hole in the universe finds its way into our own hearts? It doesn’t take much imagination to see that the ‘immense indifference of things’ leaves a hollowness in the heart of life and the pit of the stomach.

Such a deeper cosmic loneliness might explain why we can still feel alone even in a city, even in a crowd or even sometimes among our friends. It helps us see our loneliness not just as a tragedy but as a pointer towards our need from greater sense of connection than any human being could give.

In Matthew’s gospel, the very last sentence depicts Jesus saying to his perplexed but bewildered disciples, scarcely daring to believe that he has actually risen from the dead: “Surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” This simple promise is one that has held and sustained Christians for generations, in prison cells, through dangerous voyages, through purges, in times of persecution, misunderstanding and sickness and, yes, times of loneliness in modern western societies. Of course, we need a sense of belonging, and the company of others, as we are made for that. But underneath it we need a deeper connection, a bond with something, or someone at the very heart of things. Such a promise doesn’t remove loneliness, but it makes it bearable, even meaningful.

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