Thousands of Iranian 'refugees' converting to Christianity in Netherlands

[Baserka]

If yo want to help someone, you should help them regardless of what religion they follow. If you are taking advantage of someone's desperateness and bribe them to convert to your religion, you are a fraud. So I don't see why fraud A meeting fraud B should concern me.

[maneatinglizard]

This is a shame. We can laugh at a bunch of losers selling their dignity and afterlife for a little acceptance in the West, but the reality is that this speaks to a greater problem within the Muslim world. Why do people feel so desperate to leave their culture, country, and religion, that they make themselves look like fools to do it? You can only go so far with accusations of shamelessness. People have an intrinsic sense of pride in who they are, so why are these people lacking completely in it?

Fact is that the Muslim world is being bombarded not just physically, but also by propaganda that is designed to make us feel inferior. When the colonial powers ran out of money to maintain their physical hold over the world, they transitioned to controlling us mentally and culturally. So yeah, maybe Iranians do this and we don't, but don't think for a second that we (whoever "we" are, Pashtuns, Afghans, whatever) aren't succumbing to the same campaign. Just look at Afghan TV and witness how every year they act, talk, and dress more and more like Westerners. And while this process may be going slower for some groups than others, it's happening to virtually everyone.

On another note, I once had an Iranian Jehovah's Witness visit my home to try to convert us to their religion. I guess they probably thought we were Iranian, but I can't speak Farsi and I was getting ready to leave anyway, so we didn't get much time to talk. He seemed genuine from what I could tell though. Was an odd experience as I know very few apostates, and the ones I've heard of before practically all became atheist. Even the priest in that video basically admitted that he was accepting these people because Christianity is dying in the West, so it's always strange to find the few people who actually go through with it.

[khushal]

Most of the "new arrivals" are young, single males who are not used to individualism and freedom. With no friends, family, relatives and close people around, with no bright future at sight, wit no education, they lose their minds.

But its not just the single males with no family, its also ones with good family support.

When I came to the US, one thing that happened to me was that I started to question what I was taught about Islam. I did not blame Islam for some of non sense that was taught to me, like Karachi and Khostai does, but I started questioning the merit of the People that was teaching the material and also the merit of what was taught and how it applied.
Most of the village mullahs had very little education, if any, and basically repeated what they heard from someone else.
They preached to pray for good harvest, food, material wealth, protection from witchcraft, etc(things that apply to village life.) I don't blame them since they are in a resourceless society and want to keep some form of structure based on moral values and mostly want to keep HOPE alive in the particular society.
When someone from such an environment comes to the US where there is abundance of food and material wealth and the education system is based on Reason. You have to ask what will go through their minds, the culture shock that they experience. It's a whole different world.

[Shamlawar Khurasani]

This is dumb thread. I am in the Netherlands. I've seen hundreds of Afghan Tajik, Hazara and Pashtun Christians, atheists and homosexuals.

It's not an Iranian or strictly Hazara's thing. Most people from Afghanistan claim that they're Shiites, Christians and homosexuals.

There are even Sunni Pashtuns who falsely claim to be Shia. There are gay christian Pashtuns and all other varieties.

People are desperate and they want to obtain asylum. EU is treating them unfairly so because they're imaan is low they even apostasize.

Instead of making fun, we should try to focus on the reasons why people do this.

its sad. Especially because even if they claim to be gay Christians who want to get married with other gay people they still get sent back to Afghanistan.

I don't approve of what these Afghan refugees are doing but I do feel sad. I wish people wouldn't have to degrade themselves likes this for a permit to stay here.

[Friends of Baloch]

Instead of making fun, we should try to focus on the reasons why people do this.

The reason is very simple, because post-revolution Iran sucks and huge numbers of Iranians find life under God-King Ali Khamenei and the Khomeinist ideology intolerable.

Even some Iranian mullahs and former Islamists cant take it anymore and have turned to skeptics and agnostics.

Given the chance the majority of Iranians under 40 years old would leave their country if they could. But 'converting' to Christianity to try and do that just doesnt cut it, though i of course sympathize with why they all want to get out of there.

Today's Iran of the Ayatollahs is a very bizarre place. It is a country so obviously out of touch with reality that you have to either laugh at it, or face mental break down.

But the people of Iran are generally intelligent and educational attainment there is high, so they can see the ludicrousness of their country and it's ideological and structural inferiority, but are scared to do anything about it. Trust among Iranians is very low. So they dont stay, they throw in the towel and just want to leave it behind. They cant be blamed for that. But equally, they cant be taken seriously as "refugees", because most Iranians are not being actively persecuted with their lives in imminent danger.

The failure of the Iranian revolution is not the burden of any other state to take on. Harsh, but frankly, that is just the truth of it.

Iranian revolutionary ideology and the state machinery is on the level of places like China and even North Korea. Iran is a very strange and suffocating place, and many of them blame Islam for that.

[Karachi]

Another reason Islam and muslims are a big fail. I always say world should just follow Canada, a secular state, open for all. Most iranians here are secular and they are so happy here, instead of living in that Islamic hellhole. I always wonder why persians even accepted islam, or maybe they were forced, still their progressive past and culture are total opposite to islam, heck it was them who did many of those so called islamic inventions

[Saleh]

Hahahajja. This Karachi moron returned and keeps spouting the same old tired verbal diareah over and over and virtually no one is responding to him. hahah. Love it.

No one cares what a dothead thinks.