Iranian Judge Rules Beating Victim Guilty of 'Evangelism'

From this story at WorldNetDaily:-

An Iranian judge has concluded a woman who was attacked and beaten and had her sewing shop equipment destroyed by vandals has no legal recourse because she was guilty of "evangelism," according to a new report from Voice of the Martyrs, a worldwide ministry to the Persecuted Church.

. . .

The woman, whose name was not revealed, was running a tailoring business, and had volunteered to teach three young ladies how to sew. As part of the conversations that arose, her testimony about Christianity came up, and in response to a number of questions, she started teaching them about Christianity,

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The VOM contacts reported, however, one of the students was from "a fanatic Muslim family," and when they discovered the teaching, they first opposed it.

"But this young lady was seriously following her Christian beliefs. Things got worse, to the extent that her parents started beating her up and threatening her if she didn't leave her faith," the VOM report said.

"They told her, 'If you don't return to Islam, we will keep beating you until you die,'" VOM said.

She eventually fled to another city, and in their subsequent search for her, the parents and other family members sought the sewing instructor.

"They thought she might have taken refuge in the home of the lady who was teaching her how to sew. They had heard about her and the fact that she had evangelized their daughter. In any case, they contacted that lady and threatened her by telling her that if she did not send their daughter back to them, they would close down her shop and would even arrange to kill her," the report said.

"Within fundamentalist Islam, the penalty of someone who turns from Islam is death. That is why they had the right to kill her if they wanted to. Obviously, their daughter was not staying with that seamstress, but the parents did not believe this," VOM said.

"On one of the days when the seamstress was working in the dress shop, the young woman's family, including the father, went to the shop and broke all her equipment. A couple of ladies from the family started beating up the woman. They kept telling her that she forced their daughter to turn from Islam and become a Christian. They eventually informed the police about it. This lady was taken to the court because of all that had happened to her," the report continued.

"The judge considered her to be the guilty one. He told her that there was no way of refunding all the broken items in her shop. The judge said the persecutors had the right to attack her. The judge told the lady that if he heard about her doing evangelism again, he would punish her more severely," VOM said.

One word of caution: the source of this article is said to be a report from the Voice of the Martyrs. However, I was unable to find any such report on the VOM website.