Fox News - Report Finds Iran Among Worst Violators of Religious Freedom

By Benjamin Weinthal, FoxNews.com

Religious freedom is in short supply in the Middle East, according to the bipartisan U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom, which has issued a report finding Iran chief among the nations where spiritual beliefs can bring prison sentences or worse.

The commission, which reports to President Obama, named several nations including Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, North Korea and China. But it singled out Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the theocratic state’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for their harsh crackdown on non-Islamic religions.

“Since becoming president, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called for an end to the development of Christianity in Iran,” noted the report in its section on the Iranian regime’s gutting of Christian freedoms. . . .

The commission’s report cited the shocking case of U.S-Iranian pastor Abedini, who was sentenced in a January trial “without due process to eight years in prison for ’threatening the national security of Iran’ for his activity in the Christian house church movement.”

Jordan Sekulow, executive director of the American Center for Law and Justice, hailed the commission’s decision to highlight the plight of Abedini in its report. . . .

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