Immigrants in America Give Thanks for Freedom

November 22, 2000

Source: The Christian Science Monitor

On November 22, 2000, The Christian Science Monitor reported that "as religious persecution expands around the world, according to experts, America remains a relatively rare haven of religious tolerance. Around the globe, attacks on religious freedom are "absolutely on the upswing," says the Rev. Steven Snyder, president of International Christian Concern, a Maryland-based Christian human rights group. Religious liberty is 'deteriorating,' and today only one-quarter of the world's people enjoy broad religious freedom. Another 39 percent of the population faces partial constraints on practicing their faith, while the rest, more than one-third, suffer from fundamental violations of their religious freedoms, according to a survey released last month by Freedom House in Washington...The end of the cold war has seen a rise in religious tensions along with heightened ethnic and communal rivalries, experts say. Meanwhile, foreign regimes seeking to buttress themselves are more likely to target as an enemy the United States, the only remaining superpower, and in turn Christianity...'With those now seeking power, the scapegoat has been the West and the United States mainly,' says Mr. Snyder. 'With Christianity making inroads,' thanks in part to high-tech evangelizing, 'religious fundamentalist groups ... fear they will lose power over their own people.' Mina Nevisa understands this all too well. Her ordeal began one afternoon in 1982, when the 17-year-old Iranian student felt something under a table at the Teheran University library. She reached down and pulled out a Bible, the first one she had ever seen written in her native Persian. Curious, she stayed up for the next two nights reading the book with a flashlight under a blanket, despite warnings from her father, an Islamic fundamentalist priest. The discovery soon led to Ms. Nevisa's conversion to Christianity, denunciation by her parents and family, and - after the arrest and killing of members of her prayer group - her secret flight from Iran. In Europe, she received death threats after writing Don't Keep Me Silent, a book about the persecution of converted Christians in Islamic countries. So in 1998 she moved again, to the United States. Today, Nevisa is preparing to celebrate Thanksgiving at the Iranian Church of Eternal life in Oakton, Va., where her husband is pastor. As she anticipates the celebration, complete with roast turkey and cranberry sauce, and Iranian rice and pastries, Nevisa's feelings are bittersweet...Indeed, across the nation, victims of religious persecution abroad are finding special meaning in the American Thanksgiving. Taking a break from her factory job in Stamford, Conn., Margaret Chu recalls the 23 years she spent in Chinese labor camps because she refused to renounce her Catholic faith. The hardest times, she said, were when she was forced to labor for 18 hours a day harvesting rice. Food was sometimes limited to grass or rice husks. Still, she prayed daily, using her fingers as a rosary, and somehow survived. 'Here I have real freedom to believe in God, but my heart is still left behind in China with my friends still under the pressure,' she says...In Boston, Sudanese refugee Francis Bol Bok has perhaps the most compelling story of all. Enslaved in Northern Sudan by Muslims as a seven-year-old boy for 10 years, he was beaten almost daily for his Christian beliefs. Mr. Bol Bok finally escaped in 1996. Today, he says simply: 'I am most happy for my freedom.'"