Becoming an American citizen ten years ago was one of the most exciting and proud days in my life.  It was not simply because I had fled Iran – the country of my birth – where, after becoming a Christian in 1999, I was arrested and sentenced to death for the “crime” of apostasy. Indeed, the ability to live as a Christian without daily fears of arrest or persecution, much less torture and death, was life-changing. I was also able to vote in a free and democratic election for the first time in my life. It’s impossible for most Americans to imagine not having the freedoms so cherished for us all– and for which Iranians are struggling and dying in order to gain their freedom from the oppression of the Islamic Republic – and being so foreign and unimaginable for me just years earlier as I sat on death row in Tehran’s notorious Evin Prison. 

Often, as an American who was able to flee tyranny, I feel that I cherish America’s freedoms more than those who were born here and take them for granted. I understand more than most what lack of freedom looks like in an entire country, and for the citizens living under the oppression of Islamic Sharia law.