| Player1x3 said: Its illegal to be christian in Iran? |
No it isn't. In fact, iranian law considers christians, jews etc. as "dhimmi", which basically means that they are members of a recognized and "protected" other religion and thus they have special rights etc.. For example, unlike muslims christians are allowed to eat pork, drink alcohol etc. (but maybe not in public). They have reserved seats in parliament etc.
The same is true for most monotheistic religions in Iran by the way. What many people for example don't know (because it doesn't quite fit with how Iran and Ahmadinejad are portrayed in western media) is that there is a vivid jewish community in Iran that is proud to be iranian. Iran has the largest number of jews in the whole middle east (excluding Israel of course), Tehran alone for example has 11 synagogues and one of only four jewish charity hospitals worldwide, and as unbelievable as it sounds, Ahmadinejad himself is donating money to it. And it's not like the iranian jews are suffering, in fact, prominent iranian jews have pointed out on several occations that they feel comfortable in Iran and that western reports about the bad situation of jews in Iran are mostly utter bullshit.
But back to topic: Iran has not executed any christian for religious reasons in over 20 years, and has already stated that Nadarkhani will not be executed for converting to christianity, even though this may be the intended punishment for this "crime" according to official iranian law.
It's a shame that Iran is portrayed so one-sided in western media. Binary solo's analysis of Iran is accurate: Iran is competeting with countries like Saudi Arabia and Turkey about becoming the leading/most influential muslim country, and thus people like Ahmadinejad are actually very concerned about Iran's international reputation. It's ridiculous for example to believe that Iran would actually attack Israel or any other country with atomic bombs as soon as they have them.
