08/10/2026
In 2009, two young Iranian women were sentenced to death by hanging for one reason: they had become Christians, and they refused to deny it.
Marziyeh Amirizadeh and Maryam Rostampour were born into Muslim families in Iran. After converting, they studied theology and returned home with a simple plan. Under cover of night, they put New Testaments into mailboxes across Tehran and other cities. In less than three years they distributed about 20,000 Bibles and helped start secret house churches, mostly among women and young people.
Sharing the Christian faith is treated as a crime in Iran.
Converts from Islam are not recognized as Christians. Only people born into recognized Christian minorities, such as Armenians and Assyrians, are officially allowed to practice.
Someone reported them. In March 2009 the IRGC arrested them. Officers asked if they were Christians. They said yes.
Bibles were found in their apartment. They were charged with apostasy and promoting Christianity, and a judge sentenced them to death by hanging unless they returned to Islam.
They spent 259 days in Evin Prison in Tehran, a place known for torture and executions. They were interrogated for hours, threatened with hanging, and held in brutal conditions. They say they kept sharing their faith with other prisoners.
They did not know that Christians outside Iran had started a campaign for their release. Amnesty International and church groups pressed the case. Pope Benedict XVI sent a letter to the Iranian government calling for them to be freed.
After nine months, the regime released them. They later left Iran. Their account is told in the book _Captive in Iran_.
The poster is right about the 20,000 Bibles and the death sentence. It leaves out that there were two of them, and that they survived. The regime tried to silence them. It failed.
Iran still jails Christian converts for house-church meetings, prayer, baptism, and possessing Bibles, often under
“national security” charges. The law has not changed.
