Like that of non-believers during the times when the Christian Church reigned supreme, the persecution of non-Muslims in the Islamic world has been well known for centuries, but it appears to be reaching a peak with the emboldened Islamists making one aggressive move after another. Cases of non-Muslims, whether they are Hindus, Buddhists, Jews, Atheists or other, being attacked, jailed and murdered seem to be on the rise globally. Entire groups such as the Christian Copts of Egypt appear to be on the verge of extinction because of Islamic fanaticism.

Anyone who has read my work knows that I am no fan of organized religious fanaticism, so my intention here is certainly not to raise up Christianity as a great system we should all be following. Nor is my focus on this particular case meant to highlight it above the other instances of persecution based purely on religion, whatever the faith. I was struck, however, by the alleged exchange between one of the women and the deputy prosecutor in this Iranian situation, in which two women, Maryam Rustampoor and Marzieh Amirizadeh, have been imprisoned and treated badly supposedly for converting to Christianity.  To those of us who live in a country where separation of church and state is paramount, such acts are obviously condemnable and should illicit public outrage.

At the same time, this debate ostensibly from the court record reveals some important characteristics about Islam and Christianity, including their differences. If we view them from a historical perspective, both Christianity and Islam appear quite similar in a number of ways, including their origins in the monotheistic biblical Abrahamic cultus, as well as their global dominating zeal and oppressive spiritual intolerance. Between the two, these faiths have been responsible for the deaths of an estimated half a billion individuals worldwide since their inception,  and the amount of people coerced into them through fear, guilt or greed is likewise enormous.
Is God omnipresent or not?

Those similarities aside, the purported exchange between the Iranian deputy prosecutor, a "Mr. Haddad," and one of the women imprisoned for converting to Christianity, Marzieh Amirizadeh, is instructional in illustrating important doctrinal differences between the two religions. According to the Assyrian News Agency, the following took place at their trial:One of the similarities, of course, in many religions is the belief that, whatever happens to a believer, God is behind it. Unless, naturally, it reflects badly upon God, in which case it must be Satan/the Devil to blame. One would think that allowing non-believers to arrest, convict and imprison His devoted followers would reflect badly on the Lord, but, as we know, the Christian God has permitted much more than that, with countless martyrdoms supposedly suffered in His name over the centuries. According to the Bible and Judeo-Christian tradition, the list of atrocities caused by God is long indeed. The fact is that if your religion or cult believes in one god who is in charge of everything in the universe, you must constantly find justification for everything that happens, especially to you, including all the bad things. God, of course, is never to be blamed or castigated for allowing bad things to happen—others, including you and whoever else could possibly be responsible—must be blamed. In this regard, the major monotheistic religions are very much alike.What is revealing in this exchange between Haddad and Marzieh, however, is that, according to the former's Islamic beliefs, apparently, "It is impossible for God to speak with humans," while in Christianity God talks to humans all the time. Obviously, for an omnipotent God, nothing is impossible, so this remark contradicts the very notion of a monotheistic, all-powerful god in the first place. Moreover, one wonders who is speaking to us humans throughout the Koran? The "We" repeatedly voicing "His" opinions and concerns in that Muslim holy text has been taken to be Allah for some 1,400 years. Tens of millions of people have been tortured, raped and murdered in the name of the God who is supposedly speaking to us humans in the Koran.

Or, per Haddad's purported clarification, "You are not worthy for God to speak to you," is it just these wretched women who are unworthy of God's attention? And all the rest of the infidels as well? Does God/Allah speak only to devout Muslims? Or are all their some 7.5 billion prayers a day strictly one way? If God is not speaking to humans, why do the very authorities of Iran megalomaniacally depict themselves as representing Allah on Earth? It is, in reality, impossible for the rational among us to conceive in the first place that the God of the cosmos is fascinated by a group of angry, oppressive tyrants terrorizing a small country on this minuscule orb floating through the vastness of space. In regard to this position of disbelief, I guess Haddad is right in the end that God has no interest in speaking to us unworthy humans. As the late great comedian George Carlin might say, "Never has, never will."  So much for the Bible and Koran being "God's Word."