Marziyeh Amirizadeh, Marzi, is not a Persian queen but when you read her story, you might legitimately get confused with the actual Biblical heroine Queen Esther. Unlike Esther, an orphan in Persia expelled from Judea following the Babylonian conquest and exile of the Jewish people, Marzi is a native of Persia. Today that’s Iran. She lives in the United States, her adopted country where, like Esther, she has risen to the occasion “for such a time as this.” Like Esther, who put her life on the line to approach the King to save her people, Marzi also put her life on the line. She did not go before the modern “King,” the ayatollahs, to save her people from imminent death, but rather worked stealthily behind the scenes, against the ayatollahs, to affirm her faith, and for the well-being of Iran.
Marzi is an Iranian born Christian who fled the land of her birth, the land in which she came to faith. Just doing so put her life at risk. In Islam, Jews and Christians are granted the status of dhimmi, a protected second-class citizen. But in Iran, the reality is somewhat less “favorable.” Jews and Christians are persecuted, as is anyone who doesn’t fit into the narrowly defined version of extremist Shia Islam that’s hijacked Iran since 1979. Sunnis, Kurds, Bahais, and other religious and ethnic minorities are all in the regime’s crosshairs.
Coming to faith as a Christian in Iran is not something to be taken for granted. As much as there are morality police guarding how people dress and behave in public, simply being a Christian and affirming that publicly can be dangerous and life threatening. Marzi knows all too well. She was arrested, interrogated, brought to trial, and received a death sentence for what the Iranians called “apostacy.”
But Marzi is not just brave like Esther, she’s smart too. In her interrogations and even at trial, when accused of converting from Islam to Christianity, Marzi simply said, “No.” She was never a Moslem, despite the Islamic practice that a child born of a Moslem man is a Moslem, and that children born as such in Iran are registered as Moslems. She was forced to study Islam, but never avowed it, never embraced it, so she could never disavow it. Marzi enraged the judge, in whose hands her life was at stake, by recounting how God spoke to her against the judge’s (and Islam’s) belief that God only speaks to prophets and holy people. Some of her captors admired her faith and standing up to the many forms of intimidation and threats of not renouncing her Christianity, even while challenging the underpinning of Islam.
But she didn’t stop there. Marzi shared her faith in Jesus with her accusers, captors, and interrogators. She turned prison into her ministry. She challenged Iranian extremist beliefs. If Allah was really God, why could she not have a personal relationship with him? Why could Allah not speak to her directly? Why did Allah not understand prayers in her native Farsi rather than the required Arabic? If their god were truly God, he would surely be multi-lingual and receive prayers in all languages. There were many “whys” in her search for faith, and then her affirmation of it.
Marzi was always searching for a personal relationship with God, to find the truth. She learned that their god is distant, with whom you cannot have a relationship, is always ready to punish you, even inflicting torture, for the most minor infractions. She never accepted Allah, revered in Islam, as the true God.
She understood they were lying, and was thirsty to get to know God. Eventually, God spoke to Marzi in a dream, revealing the true face of Islam, and God’s love for her and all people. A God of love was comforting, made sense, and upended their god of fear. After this, God made Himself present in her life, and became her rock.
In coming to faith in the land whose Islamic leaders brand Israel “the Zionist entity” and “the little Satan,” Marzi also had a spiritual awakening about Israel and the Jewish people, how important they were to her faith and very existence as a Christian. This alone could have earned her another death sentence. Even in our conversation for the Inspiration from Zion podcast, she notes dispassionately, would be used by Iranian extremists to demonstrate her “spying” for Israel.
But Marzi does not do anything in half measures. Though Iran is the land of her birth, and the United States is where she’s now a citizen and where she has completed two degrees, and even run for elected office, Israel was a dream, always on her radar. This year she fulfilled her dream and visited the Land of the Bible, the Land in which her faith was born, where Jesus lived. Visiting Israel aroused a special love for God’s people, and inspired in her own faith. She came to Israel to share a message, that just as she was arrested and sentenced to death, and only a miracle saved her, and the Iranian threat to Israel is very real, God will also protect Israel as He has protected her.
2500 years ago, Esther beseeched the Jewish people to pray and fast for her, that she should be able to use her position to save the Jewish people from the death decree forced by the evil Haman. Today, Marzi represents Esther’s bravery and boldness, is very much a bridge between Jews and Christians, an advocate for women’s rights, religious freedom, and freeing Iran from the evil of the ayatollahs. We must join her in prayers for Iran, that the Iranian people will be saved from its evil rulers today, just as the Jews of ancient Persia were saved 2500 years ago.
Marzi’s most recent book, “A Love Journey with God,” is an inspiring read, recounting the evil of Islam in Iran, her coming to faith, arrest and imprisonment, and her journey to freedom.
Jonathan Feldstein, Founder and President, Genesis 123 Foundation – https://genesis123.co/
THIS IS PART ONE OF MARZI’S STORY, PART TWO WILL FOLLOW IN THE SEPTEMBER ISSUE
