{"id":1980,"date":"2010-07-24T19:22:48","date_gmt":"2010-07-25T02:22:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/eaf.net\/mvp\/?p=1980"},"modified":"2010-07-24T19:22:48","modified_gmt":"2010-07-25T02:22:48","slug":"iran-christians-targeted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2010\/iran-christians-targeted\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran: Christians Targeted"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>Iran&#8217;s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslims this week to fight the &#8220;blind and savage terrorism&#8221; fueled by the West. That bodes ill for believers, who are often targeted because of assumptions that Christianity is Western.<\/p>\n<p>Greg Musselman with Voice of the Martyrs Canada says there&#8217;s reason for concern. &#8220;Iran President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has stated that he is going to really go after the underground churches. [He claims] they&#8217;re illegal, they shouldn&#8217;t be happening. There&#8217;s these apostasy laws&#8230;. We need to be praying for the legislators in Iran that they would do the right thing and that they would be guided by the Lord.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Will these statements unleash a wave of violence against Christians? &#8220;Unfortunately, when there is this kind of violence taking place, Christians are targeted,&#8221; explains Musselman, adding that it is not always the faith aspect that draws negative attention. Sometimes, it is not directly faith-related. He says, &#8220;The churches, if they&#8217;re displaying crosses or if they&#8217;re not dressing like Muslims,&#8221; can paint the mark.<\/p>\n<p>However, the harsh reactions aren&#8217;t necessarily creating the response expected. A combination of disillusionment and despair is actually acting as a catalyst for the Gospel. Musselman notes that &#8220;we&#8217;re seeing these underground churches springing up all over Iran, where there are young people coming to know the Lord.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Read the full article here: <a href='http:\/\/www.mnnonline.org\/article\/14506'>Iran ramps tension with the West<\/a><\/p>\n<!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on the_content --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on the_content -->","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Iran&#8217;s supreme religious leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei called on Muslims this week to fight the &#8220;blind and savage terrorism&#8221; fueled by the West. That bodes ill for believers, who are often targeted because of assumptions that Christianity is Western. Greg Musselman with Voice of the Martyrs Canada says there&#8217;s reason for concern. &#8220;Iran President Mahmoud &#8230; <a title=\"Iran: Christians Targeted\" class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/2010\/iran-christians-targeted\/\" aria-label=\"More on Iran: Christians Targeted\">Read more<\/a><!-- AddThis Advanced Settings generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><!-- AddThis Share Buttons generic via filter on get_the_excerpt --><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6,3],"tags":[161,29,39,446],"class_list":["post-1980","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-endangered-christians","category-middle-east","tag-conversion","tag-islam","tag-persecution","tag-prayer"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/prJUJ-vW","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1980"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1980\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1980"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1980"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.eaf.net\/mvp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1980"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}