Praying for Asylum Our World

Now it's time for Our World.

In the Netherlands and across Europe, thousands of Iranian

refugees are turning to Christianity.

Tired of the lack of freedom in the Islamic Republic,

they say conversion offers a new start.

And it's a much needed boost to Dutch church congregations.

Every week two traditional churches are closing in this country.

But converting to Christianity can carry a heavy penalty in Iran

and some say the refugees are only joining the church

so they won't be sent back.

I lied to them.

Most Iranians regard this to be the best way,

it's not just me.

The difficulty is that we can't look into people's minds and hearts.

The difficulty is that we can't look into people's minds and hearts.

I've been reporting on refugee stories for many years

and now I'm in the Netherlands to find out why so many Iranians

are converting to Christianity.

Are they born again or simply praying for asylum?

It's a Sunday morning near Dorne, in the central Netherlands

and preparations are under way for a special ceremony.

Orif, an Iranian student, in his 20s, is getting ready

to be baptised.

Converting to Christianity can be punished by death in Iran and he's

scared to show his face on camera in case it causes problems

for his family back home.

Orif came to the Netherlands over a year ago and left Islam

after meeting Christians in Europe.

TRANSLATION: The Christians I met were really nice and at

the beginning I wondered how these people could be so good.

I wanted to know more about their opinions

and what they actually thought.

And when I read about it, I realised that I knew nothing

about Christianity because where we grew up everything was closed,

you couldn't get information.

The fact that everything in Christian tee is based

on compassion and love is extraordinary.

This was the first thing I saw in people here.

Some here have asked us not to show their faces.

The baptism will be performed by the Dutch pastor of this church,

Vaast.

In baptism that is the moment that someone, he's no longer a secret

believer, but now he's coming out and he's professing his faith

and that he wants to be a follower of Jesus.

APPLAUSE.

Orif has come here with Dutch friends from his church

which is a huge part of his life here.

Although Orif has found a surrogate family in the church,

his own parents, back in Iran, have cut him off financially

since his conversion.

Although Orif has found a surrogate family in the church,

his own parents, back in Iran, have cut him off financially

since his conversion.

TRANSLATION: I grew up in a religious family,

it's really hard for them to accept other beliefs.

Since I've changed my beliefs, they've become aggressive

towards me.

All my attempts to make peace with them have been futile.

Orif is just one of three Iranians being baptised here today.

How often do you baptise people?

An average of 25 per year.

Vaast tells me many of the Iranians here come from the local refugee

centre just down the road.

For Iranians wanting to stay here, conversion to Christianity can be

the basis of a successful asylum claim.

Converts argue that their new faith would expose them to persecution

if they were sent home.

Vaast tells me that not everyone who asks for baptism

is entirely genuine.

If someone is entering here into the church and the same

day, first day, he is asking me, "When can I be baptised?"

Then I know enough.

I know he has a case and that he's searching for baptism and then

I explain that it will not help him.

That the certificate will not help him because our government

is not mad.

They can easily come to know if you are a real believer or not

and I'm also not willing to help you with such a thing

because we are a church, we are followers of Jesus Christ.

We try to please him and we are not some group who is helping refugees

to get asylum here.

Orif seems to be very genuine, he'd spent about a year preparing

to be baptised, but I've heard of many cases of Iranian refugees

who have been baptised in a very short time after converting.

There are no exact numbers for how many Iranians have been baptised

across Europe in recent years.

Many of them come to Christianity through Persische, one

of the largest Persian churches in Europe, famous

for sharing their activities online.

The leader, Masood, has baptised literally thousands of Iranian

converts from the streets of Paris to Turkey.

He tells me he himself got baptised on his first day in the Netherlands,

over 17 years ago.

Soon after converting, Masood set up his church here.

Soon after converting, Masood set up his church here.

Masood often let's refugees stay with him while they're waiting

to hear about their asylum claims and he introduces me to a man,

Masood often let's refugees stay with him while they're waiting

to hear about their asylum claims and he introduces me to a man,

we will call him Syed, who admits he only converted

as he thought it would help his case.

TRANSLATION: I became a Christian to live in the Netherlands,

it was the best possible option.

Syed was turned down for asylum and is now trying to appeal.

It's easy to imagine wht immigrants like him would risk lying

to the authorities.

Christianity can be the gateway to a new life in Europe.

I'm on my way to meet Ali, a young Iranian living with a Dutch

family, who met him in church and are now helping him to get

settled into Dutch society.

He has been granted asylum in the Netherlands and is living

with Christians Yoka and her husband Ronald.

We saw on television, I think like everybody did,

the big wave of refugees coming in 2015 and then it was at the end

of 2015 the start of 2016, that they also contacted us

as a church and they said, "We want to know more about

Christianity.

We want to be baptised."

They come to us, "Can you help me talk to the doctor?

Can you help me talk to the lawyer?"

We try to help them with their documents and translate

for them whatever we can.

Although Ali may be far from home, he gets to enjoy a little Iranian

companionship in Bible studies held at his house each week,

where they sing Christian hymns in farsi.

All these men came to the Netherlands as refugees,

most of them have been turned down for asylum.

We're hiding their identities for their safety in case

they are sent back to Iran.

One of them, Sorop, not his real name, explains why he left?

TRANSLATION: The force and the oppression were constant,

they torment us for everything.

The way we dressed, our hairstyle or because we ate during Ramadan.

I've been in the Netherlands for 16 months, before that

I was in the Jungle in Calais for almost four months,

I wanted to go to England.

I arrived here after a dangerous journey.

It was by God's grace that I didn't die, for many people did die.

I eventually got here, but my case was not accepted.

They didn't believe I was a Christian.

I don't know why.

Sorop says he converted to Christianity years ago in Iran,

but he's still covering the basics in Bible studies.

And he didn't seem to know simple facts about Jesus' life.

We know that in this country the number of Christians is now less

than it used to be.

In fact, we are a minority now, I believe.

Now we see that people from other countries are coming

and they are new in their new religion and they have a lot

of questions.

That's also good for the church because now Christians that

are Christians for many years have to think about,

what do I believe?

Why do I believe it?

Can I explain it to a new believer?

So it's also good for them.

It's hard to know what to think, but these guys are saying

they are really into Christianity and they converted into Christianity

facing so many threats in Iran, but they're not able

to answer basic questions.

In 2015, there were just over 45,000 applications for asylum

in the Netherlands, just under 2,000 of them were from Iranians.

I've come to where the Dutch immigration authority,

the IND, interview asylum seekers to find out how they work out

who are the genuine believers.

I think we have interviews with asylum seekers who claim that

they've converted to Christianity basically every day and I think more

than one every day.

It started like a couple of years ago, maybe 2010,

around that time, it might be the situations in the country

of origin, like the places that people come from.

It might also be that churches have become more active in evangelising

people and it might be that smugglers have been telling them

stories about how to get asylum in the Netherlands and in Europe.

Isn't it hard for you to say someone is really genuine?

The difficulty is that we can't look into people's minds and hearts.

Initially, basically, a lot of our questions were focused

on practical knowledge, like biblical knowledge.

We have shifted now to questions that are focused more on the process

that people have gone through and their personal experiences.

We don't only look at, for example, certificates of baptism.

Biblical knowledge can be studied, but when you ask someone in-depth

questions about their personal thoughts and feelings

and experiences and their motivations, yeah, I think you get

a better hunch or a better idea of how genuine the conversion is.

The IND do not keep statistics for why people are granted asylum,

but of the 1,885 Iranians who applied for asylum in 2015,

only 340 cases were granted.

I've come to see Sorop from the Bible study group again,

he's staying at a refugee centre while he waits to hear the outcome

of his appeal.

He shows me his letter of rejection from the IND,

which is in Dutch.

TRANSLATION: The reasons they rejected my claim.

They did not believe me, that's their opinion,

but there's no window to a person's heart,

so you can open it and see inside.

The documents set out in the detail the ways in which the immigration

officials found his story to be inconsistent.

The Immigration Service said he also didn't have the depth of knowledge

and understanding of Christianity that they would expect.

TRANSLATION: I explained to them that I spoke normally,

the way I spoke in my neighbourhood.

I'm just a normal guy with a high school diploma,

it's their fault that they didn't understand me.

When I found out I had been rejected, you may not believe me,

but I thanked God because finally I had a decision.

If there was freedom in Iran and everybody

could have their own ideas and follow their own religion,

then I would have gone back.

My mother is there and she's the most precious thing to me.

She has told me to return, but it's just not possible.

Sorop is still waiting to hear about the outcome of his appeal.

Conversion doesn't just change the lives of Iranians,

in parts of the Netherlands it's also transforming the church itself.

I've been invited to Vaast's church for the Sunday service,

it's not like anything I've ever seen before.

The hymns are sung in Farsi and Dutch and all the preaching

is translated too.

It is more chaotic and you know the Dutch churches, if it starts

at 10.00am, it starts exactly at 10.00am, maybe one minute late,

but not two minutes late it starts, but now this is impossible.

Some people may think that these changes, they may change

the church's character.

Yes, it is.

What do you think about that?

Yes, it is changing.

That was our wish because the church is dying in Europe and in

the Netherlands too.

Every week two traditional churches are closing in this country.

Every week, you see.

That is because of the identities, it's kind of only old people

are sitting there and I have the wish always and that is,

we do this, it's intercultural and mixing up the cultures

because we do learn a lot of one another.

Not everyone is happy about the changes happening here,

several Dutch families have left the congregation.

Simon used to do the music at the church, but he didn't

like what was happening and left a few years ago.

We are used to very international communities, society

and we loved it.

I think it can make our culture, our Dutch culture, much richer

if you're connected to foreigners.

It was very nice to a certain point.

When they started preaching in farsi and using farsi as the tongue,

it became very difficult because we couldn't

trust the translations.

The turning point was that somebody was inter-preaching,

a guy from Afghanistan, and he changed the message.

He changed the message into something that he liked.

I think in some ways the church are a little bit naive

and they are very, very energetic and eager to help people

with the gospel and freedom from Islam.

The danger is that you are used by people who use their baptism

for other purposes.

They can use their baptism to get status and then you're in real

trouble because then the ones that really are in danger and need to be

helped here are not going to be taken serious any more.

It's impossible to tell how many of the new converts I've spoken

to are genuine, but it's plain to see they've already brought great

change to the churches they attend, and the church has had an equally

profound impact on their lives, offering community and support

in a new country.

But the sheer number of people claiming they have found Jesus means

the asylum system itself has also changed and it's now harder

to convince the authorities that a conversion to

Christianity is genuine.

So for those, like Sorop, who have had their I assume claim

rejected, all they can do now is pray for permission to start

a new life in the Netherlands.

Hello there.