Except perhaps for the Gaza Strip, the Islamic Republic of Iran is the only country in the world governed by an explicitly Islamist regime. Yet it also has one of the world’s fastest-growing Christian populations—despite the risk of severe persecution for Muslims who abandon their religion. Daniel Pipes writes:
This trend results from the extreme form of Islam imposed by the theocratic regime. An Iranian church leader explained in 2019: “What if I told you Islam is dead? What if I told you the mosques are empty inside Iran? . . . What if I told you the best evangelist for Jesus was the Ayatollah Khomeini, [the founder of the Islamic Republic]?”
As a clandestine phenomenon, the practice of what are sometimes called Muslim-Background Believers (MBBs) lacks clergy and church buildings but instead consists of self-starting disciples and tiny house churches of four to five members each, with either hushed singing or none at all. Its lay leadership, in striking contrast to the mullahs who rule Iran, consists mainly of women.
In another contrast to the government, Iranian MBBs tend to be fervently pro-Israel. They are, explains a documentary, “bowing their knees to the Jewish messiah—with kindled affection toward the Jewish people.” A convert states, “we fall in love with Jews.” Converts have even expressed a hope to build a “resistance church” in Iran to counter the regime’s threats to Israel.
The growth of Iranian Christianity seems, paradoxically, to be a result of the general demoralization that has resulted from theocratic totalitarianism. Moreover, this development is a sign that the regime is losing its grip on the people. If so, Pipes concludes,
the consequences are enormous. The collapse of Khomeini’s regime would not only fundamentally alter the balance of power in the Middle East; it would also likely terminate the Islamist surge that Iranian revolutionaries forwarded in 1978-79, ending the malign historical cycle that largely began in Iran.
Read more on Middle East Forum: https://www.meforum.org/62458/iran-christian-boom