메뉴 보기
대다수 미국인들은 혐오와 숙명론이 뒤섞인 감정으로 이란을 바라본다. 이란은 북한 다음으로 압제가 심한 나라다. 북한과 마찬가지로 이란은 국제사회의 반대에 저항하면서 군사적으로 사용 가능한 핵무기를 열심히 개발하고 있다. 그러나 미국은 이란의 이런 현실에 대해 무기력한 태도를 보여주고 있다.
1970년대 혁명 뒤 잘 조직된 이란 “대학생들”이 테헤란 주재 미국 대사관을 점거했을 때 보좌관들이 미국인 인질들을 석방하라고 촉구했을 때 당시 이란의 최고지도자였던 루홀라 호메이니는 “미국은 아무것도 할 수 없다”고 말했다.
이란을 지배하는 이슬람 성직자들은 유엔 안전보장이사회의 결의안 5개와 국제사회의 갈수록 강화되는 외교 및 경제 제재에 맞서 호메이니가 옳았다는 것을 거듭 재확인할 심산이다. 국제사회의 제재로 이란의 화폐 가치가 폭락했고 일반 시민들이 생활고를 겪고 있으나 정권에는 영향을 주지 못한다.
미국의 자유와 국가 안보에 관심을 기울이는 미국인들이 테헤란의 정권을 약화시키는 것을 돕기 위해서 할 수 있는 작은 일이 있다. 누구나 이란의 교도소에 수감되어 있는 남녀 정치범들 가운데 한 사람을 정해서 편지를 써 보내면 된다.
마르지에 아미르자데와 마리암 로스탐푸르는 무슬림들을 기독교로 개종시킨다는 의심을 받고 2009년 당국에 체포되었다. 두 여자는 무슬림 가정에서 태어나 10대 때 이슬람을 통한 의미 탐구로 진리의 갈증을 해소하지 못해 기독교로 개종했다.
두 여자는 터키로 가서 무슬림에서 개종한 신도들을 대상으로 하는 기독교 신학교에서 공부한 다음 이란으로 돌아와 인터넷으로 관심을 표시한 사람들에게 페르시아어판 성경을 제공하는 사업을 벌였다. 두 사람은 2년 동안 테헤란 등 대도시 지역 주민들에게 금지품인 기독교 성경 2만권 이상을 제공했다.
 |
| 케니스 R 팀머맨 美 이란 민주재단 총재 |
그들과 함께 수감된 여자 죄수들은 생계를 위해 매춘을 한 여자들과 가혹한 생활 현실에서 위안을 얻기 위해 마약을 복용한 여자들이었다. 이란 사회에서는 남자가 가족의 여자들을 사실상 소유물로 취급하며 멋대로 학대할 수 있다.
두 여자가 수감된 감방 안에서 오래지 않아 주목할 만한 변화가 나타나기 시작했다. 교도소에 수감된 여자 죄수들이 두 여자와 함께 기도를 하기 시작한 것이다. 마리암은 “우리는 에빈 교도소를 우리의 교회로 변모시켰다”고 말했다.
두 사람의 처지가 외부 세계에 알려지자 기독교인들이 편지를 보내기 시작했다. 두 사람을 동정한 간수들이 많을 때면 매일 40∼50통의 편지가 에빈 교도소에 배달된다는 사실을 알려 주었다. 외부에서 보낸 편지가 도움이 된 것으로 보인다. 이런 편지 보내기 운동에 이란 당국은 당황했다. 바깥세상의 압력 덕분에 자기네가 석방된 것으로 마리암은 믿는다.
마무드 아마디네자드가 대통령에 취임한 직후인 2005년 이란에서 기독교를 뿌리 뽑겠다고 몇 차례 장담했음에도 불구하고 이란의 가정 교회 운동이 두드러지게 확산되어 정권을 불안하게 만들고 있다. 기독교 목사들 특히 이슬람을 포기한 목사들이 실종되기 시작했다. 처형만으로 불충분하자 이란 정부는 기독교도들을 투옥하여 개종을 강요하기 시작했다.
이란의 이슬람 정권은 정치와 종교 탄압을 완벽할 정도로 교묘하게 실시한다. 교묘한 탄압기술을 동원하여 사람들의 육체와 정신을 동시에 파괴하고 있다. 이란 정권은 바깥세상의 눈이 미치지 않는 닫힌 문 뒤에서 사람들을 조용히 죽이기를 즐긴다.
마리암과 아미르자데는 그 닫힌 문을 조금씩 열어 자유의 빛을 비추는 방법을 우리 모두에게 알려준다.
케니스 R 팀머맨 美 이란 민주재단 총재
워싱턴타임스·정리=오성환 외신전문위원
Taking on Tehran, one prisoner at a time
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
Most Americans look at Iran with a mixture of revulsion and fatalism. The regime is about as bad as repressive regimes get, just behind North Korea. Like North Korea, it is working hard to develop a militarily useful arsenal of nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community. Yet, the United States has shown itself powerless to do anything about it.
Early on in the 1970s revolution, not long after well-organized "students" seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sneered at aides who urged him to release the hostages. "America can do nothing," he said.
Tehran's ruling clerics are determined to prove Khomeini right yet again, as they stand defiant against five United Nations Security Council resolutions and an increasingly tight net of international financial and diplomatic sanctions that has devastated the value of their currency and hurt ordinary Iranians, but not the regime.
So here is one small thing that Americans who care about our freedom and security can do to help undermine the regime in Tehran: adopt an Iranian political prisoner and write to him or her in Iran.
MarziyehAmirzadeh and MariyamRostampour were arrested in March 2009 because the regime suspected them of evangelizing Muslims. In fact, both women were born into Muslim families and became Christians in their teens, as their search for meaning through Islam left them thirsty for truth.
They traveled to Turkey to attend a seminary for former Muslim believers, then returned to Iran to deliver Persian-language editions of the Gospel to all who expressed an interest. Over a three-year period, they handed out more than 20,000 Bibles in Tehran and other cities, repeatedly passing unharmed through security roadblocks with their dangerous contraband as if under divine protection.
When they were finally thrown into Iran's notorious Evin prison, accused as spies for promoting Christianity, they didn't know whether they were about to die. They prayed together to gather courage and strength.
They also prayed with other inmates in their cellblock broken women who had turned to prostitution to make ends meet, or who sought solace in drugs from the brutality of life in today's Iran, where Muslim men virtually own the women of their family and can mistreat them viciously and at will.
Soon, something remarkable began to happen: The women in prison began to pray with them. "We turned Evin Prison into our church," says Maryam.
I had the opportunity to meet these two remarkable young women at a recent event in Washington, D.C., sponsored by Nina Shea, who directs the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom.
Maryam and Marziyeh shared their testimony and recounted the appalling conditions inside Evin Prison, which they have written about with such poise and beauty in their gripping memoir, "Captive in Iran" (Tyndale Momentum, 2013).
During their 38-day interrogation, regime officials repeatedly threatened to execute them if they didn't recant their Christian faith. "So the first reason we are here able to tell this story is God's grace," Maryam said.
As word reached the outside world of their plight, ordinary Christians began sending them letters. At the peak, a prison guard who came to sympathize with them after they prayed together told them that 40 to 50 letters were arriving for them at Evin every day.
Even though the authorities never actually gave them the letters, the two young women knew that others on the outside were aware of their plight. "That really helped, and it embarrassed the regime. Outside pressure forced them to release us," Maryam believes.
The remarkable expansion of the house church movement in Iran has unsettled the Islamic regime for years. Regime President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly boasted to provincial governors in 2005 shortly after he took office, "I will stop Christianity in this country."
Pastors began disappearing, especially those who came from a Muslim upbringing and converted. When killing wasn't enough of a deterrent, Mr. Ahmadinejad and his goons began to lock them up, demanding that they recant their faith since apostasy in Islam is punishable by death.
Today, thanks to organizations such as the American Center for Law and Justice, we have learned about the trials of pastors such as YoucefNaderkhani, who was repeatedly threatened with execution if he did not recant his faith, and SaeedAbedini, an American who was imprisoned during a trip to his homeland and who has been refused medical treatment for the injuries caused by sustained beatings from his jailers.
The Islamic regime in Iran has refined political and religious repression to near mathematical perfection. It seeks to break people, both physically and spiritually. It likes to kill quietly, behind closed doors, beyond the gaze of the outside world.
In their remarkable memoir and at their website, CaptiveInIran.com, MarziyehAmirzadeh and Maryam Rostampour show us a way of wedging open those doors so the light of freedom can burst through.
By Kenneth R. Timmerman
Most Americans look at Iran with a mixture of revulsion and fatalism. The regime is about as bad as repressive regimes get, just behind North Korea. Like North Korea, it is working hard to develop a militarily useful arsenal of nuclear weapons in defiance of the international community. Yet, the United States has shown itself powerless to do anything about it.
Early on in the 1970s revolution, not long after well-organized "students" seized the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini sneered at aides who urged him to release the hostages. "America can do nothing," he said.
Tehran's ruling clerics are determined to prove Khomeini right yet again, as they stand defiant against five United Nations Security Council resolutions and an increasingly tight net of international financial and diplomatic sanctions that has devastated the value of their currency and hurt ordinary Iranians, but not the regime.
So here is one small thing that Americans who care about our freedom and security can do to help undermine the regime in Tehran: adopt an Iranian political prisoner and write to him or her in Iran.
MarziyehAmirzadeh and MariyamRostampour were arrested in March 2009 because the regime suspected them of evangelizing Muslims. In fact, both women were born into Muslim families and became Christians in their teens, as their search for meaning through Islam left them thirsty for truth.
They traveled to Turkey to attend a seminary for former Muslim believers, then returned to Iran to deliver Persian-language editions of the Gospel to all who expressed an interest. Over a three-year period, they handed out more than 20,000 Bibles in Tehran and other cities, repeatedly passing unharmed through security roadblocks with their dangerous contraband as if under divine protection.
When they were finally thrown into Iran's notorious Evin prison, accused as spies for promoting Christianity, they didn't know whether they were about to die. They prayed together to gather courage and strength.
They also prayed with other inmates in their cellblock broken women who had turned to prostitution to make ends meet, or who sought solace in drugs from the brutality of life in today's Iran, where Muslim men virtually own the women of their family and can mistreat them viciously and at will.
Soon, something remarkable began to happen: The women in prison began to pray with them. "We turned Evin Prison into our church," says Maryam.
I had the opportunity to meet these two remarkable young women at a recent event in Washington, D.C., sponsored by Nina Shea, who directs the Hudson Institute's Center for Religious Freedom.
Maryam and Marziyeh shared their testimony and recounted the appalling conditions inside Evin Prison, which they have written about with such poise and beauty in their gripping memoir, "Captive in Iran" (Tyndale Momentum, 2013).
During their 38-day interrogation, regime officials repeatedly threatened to execute them if they didn't recant their Christian faith. "So the first reason we are here able to tell this story is God's grace," Maryam said.
As word reached the outside world of their plight, ordinary Christians began sending them letters. At the peak, a prison guard who came to sympathize with them after they prayed together told them that 40 to 50 letters were arriving for them at Evin every day.
Even though the authorities never actually gave them the letters, the two young women knew that others on the outside were aware of their plight. "That really helped, and it embarrassed the regime. Outside pressure forced them to release us," Maryam believes.
The remarkable expansion of the house church movement in Iran has unsettled the Islamic regime for years. Regime President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reportedly boasted to provincial governors in 2005 shortly after he took office, "I will stop Christianity in this country."
Pastors began disappearing, especially those who came from a Muslim upbringing and converted. When killing wasn't enough of a deterrent, Mr. Ahmadinejad and his goons began to lock them up, demanding that they recant their faith since apostasy in Islam is punishable by death.
Today, thanks to organizations such as the American Center for Law and Justice, we have learned about the trials of pastors such as YoucefNaderkhani, who was repeatedly threatened with execution if he did not recant his faith, and SaeedAbedini, an American who was imprisoned during a trip to his homeland and who has been refused medical treatment for the injuries caused by sustained beatings from his jailers.
The Islamic regime in Iran has refined political and religious repression to near mathematical perfection. It seeks to break people, both physically and spiritually. It likes to kill quietly, behind closed doors, beyond the gaze of the outside world.
In their remarkable memoir and at their website, CaptiveInIran.com, MarziyehAmirzadeh and Maryam Rostampour show us a way of wedging open those doors so the light of freedom can burst through.
