Former prisoner in Iran, pastor Saeed Abedini, made headlines recently for a post on his Facebook page that condemned his erstwhile religion Islam.
According to Charisma News, the September 11 anniversary post read, "Still after 15 years every day people die because of the teaching of Qur'an and Islam even we all LOVE MUSLIMS and OUR ENEMIES but we need to declare to them and to the whole world that *** ISLAM IS FROM SATAN *** who comes to kill and destroys as JESUS said SATAN COMES TO DESTROY and KILL (John 10:10)."
That was not the end of it. The pastor continued, "We need to announce WE ARE IN THE WAR, I am telling to every one specially our political leaders. I recorded below evangelical VIDEO in Persian for today 11 September to let all Muslims and Iranian that we all as CHRISTIANS BELIEVE ISLAM IS FROM SATAN NOT GOD. And who follow it is a follower a lier prophet and SATANIC RELIGION. I told in this video most of the pastors or Christian don't dare to say it loud and clearly because of FEAR which some of them call it wisdom which is not but *** I LOUDLY DECLARE ISLAM HAS BEEN MADE BY SATAN TO STOP MUSLIMS TO BE SAVED AND GO TO HEAVEN BY JESUS CHRIST BLOOD AS LORD AND SAVIOR BECAUSE SATAN WANTS TO LEAD THEM TO HELL ***. But we want MUSLIM BE SAVED."
Pastor Saeed Abedini, who is Iranian by birth, converted to Christianity from Islam. In 2012, he had been sentenced to eight years in prison in Iran while working in an orphanage and was released back to the U.S. in January this year as a part of a prisoner swap program.
As Christian Today reported, upon his release, Abedini told the attorney for the American Centre for Law and Justice, Jay Sekulow, "Today was like my first day of my life, so I was born again."
One of the speculated reasons behind the treatment toward Abedini is that while the Iranian government is quite tolerant of ethnic Christians, such as Armenians and Assyrians, people who convert to Christianity from Islam are not allowed to pray in public.