Battered wife fled Iran, began ministry but still faces danger

FPI / March 9, 2020

Having survived an abusive marriage, a Muslim woman from Iran made her way to Sweden to lead a Christian ministry for Muslims, a report said.

Annahita Parsan, "as a young woman in a Muslim culture was powerless and insignificant," Dale Hurd wrote for CBN News on March 6. "Her only hope was that she might one day find a good husband, and she did. But he died suddenly in an accident, and then she found herself trapped in a second marriage so violent, she expected to die."

Parsan told CBN News that during her abuse, "I didn't know anything. It was darkness. It was a really bad life."

And although she writes about the abuse in her book, "Stranger No More", Parsan said "It's not that easy speaking about that."

Parsan admits being beaten with a shovel by her then-husband. As a battered wife, with bruises and cuts all over her body, Parsan eventually tried to kill herself with pills, but she survived.

Parsan's "journey to Christ and across two continents is the stuff of Hollywood movies, one that would include several brushes with death," Hurd wrote.

Parsan, her husband and her children fled Iran through the mountains to Turkey in 1984, where she wound up in a Turkish prison. The family would make it to Denmark where Parsan said she divorced her still-abusive husband — and also heard the gospel for the first time. She then moved to Sweden where she and her two children walked into a church and prayed, "We are Christians, from now on," she said.

Parsan has since entered the ministry "and has led more than 1,500 Muslims to Christ," Hurd wrote.

She leads two churches and trains other churches how to reach out to and disciple Muslim background believers. Former Muslims hungry for "the God who loves" fill her church each Sunday. Parsan believes this was foretold in Jeremiah chapter 49, verse 39: "But in the latter days I will restore the fortunes of Elam, declares the Lord."

"It is about Elam and Elam is Persian," Parsan said. "And when I read that I know that it's about us. It's about all their life and it's amazing. God told Jeremiah at that time, and it's happening just now."

But Muslim immigration has also made Sweden a home for dangerous radicals, and Parsan told CBN News that she has received death threats and lives with the knowledge she could be killed.

Parsan said Sweden "…is a free country. But it's dangerous, too." She says she sometimes wonders if she will be killed by Islamists in Sweden.

As a young woman living what seemed like a hopeless existence in Iran, Annahita Parsan saw no plan and no purpose in her abusive marriage, only random violence. But God had a plan.

"God loved me and he was in my life from the beginning," Parsan said. "Sometimes [when reflecting on her life] I think, wow, it's beautiful."

Free Press International