Christian Junior High School: Fill & Download for Free

As pointed by others, the experience varies greatly between different Muslim countries. This is my take on being Christian in Iran:Christianity is one of the officially recognized religions by the Islamic Republic's government, the others being Jewish and Zoroastrianism. That provides the followers of these "minority" religions with many rights not extended to Muslims.These rights include consumption, production and sale of alcoholic beverages as well as food products containing pork at home or restaurants run by same. Rules in regards to sex and adultery are also not applicable to any of the minorities. They can date openly, hold celebrations and parties without any restrictions on music and attire imposed on Muslims.Although most Christians living in Iran are Armenian and to much lower numbers Assyrian, churches of various Christian sects (Catholics, Protestants and others) are present and active in Tehran and other major cities. They are free to practice all and any of their religious events and occasions and special arrangements have been made to accommodate any particular needs. Just last week the government passed a law to allow Jewish student to be excused from their own ethnic as well as public schools during Shabbat.Minorities can attend public schools or attend special schools organized by their community. Two of the most prestigious schools in Tehran are run by Catholic nuns from France. They get a different curriculum at such schools and in an Armenian school, for example, all classes are conducted in Armenian, not Farsi. It is not uncommon for many families to keep their children in their own primary schools and have them attend junior high and high school at a public school to obtain a better command of both languages.They also get to have their own representative in the Iranian parliament, Majles, despite having a lower number of constituents when compared with other (Muslim) members.On the negative side, they still have to observe the restriction on covering their head and body for women in public places. Men are restricted from wearing walking shorts or sleeveless tops. They are also restricted from holding key governmental jobs and positions of authority such as Judgeship. As such, a large majority of religious minorities in Iran are entrepreneurs, running small and medium size companies or family shops.Any evangelical effort and trying to convert Muslims to Christianity is forbidden and is a punishable offense.Churches in Iran:St. Sarkis Armenian cathedral is perhaps the best known church in Tehran. Its Armenian Genocide memorial draws a large crowd every April.St. Mary is a Russian Orthodox Church in Tehran.St. Peter church is Greek Orthodox.St. Mary Catholic Church, Tehran.This church in Iranian Azerbaijan province is believed to be the resting place of St. Jude, and very popular with foreign pilgrims.Vank Cathedral in Isfahan's Armenian Quarter is perhaps the most beautiful church in all of Iran.

I believed that Americans didn't care about children.I lived in Iran in 1988, on the eighth year of the longest war of the twentieth century, in which Iran was not the aggressor. Despite that, almost the entire world supplied weapons to the aggressor -- the neighboring Saddam -- including chemical weapons. About two years prior to that year, the United Nations had ordered a ceasefire that both sides ignored and the world forgot, in the ever-escalating conflict.In 1988, the United States shot down an Iranian civilian plane, inside Iran's waters, with 66 children on board. [2] That year, I started believing the propaganda that the U.S. was an omnipresent monster that didn't care about children. The tragedy felt so unfathomable to the public that they made a postage stamp from it:As a teenager in high school, I experienced the status quo forcing us to march over the American flag painted on the school yard before every "morning prayer". In the social scene, before every "Friday Prayer" (the equivalent of Christian Mass in the public arena) they'd chant "Death to America(n policies)". An anti-colonial battle hymn, produced since the early days of the 1979 revolution, remained on the television singing:"Amrika, Amrika, Marg be neyrang-e to, Khoon-e javanaan-e ma michekad az chang-e to!"(Trans-literation: America, America, Death to your black magic; The blood of our children drips from your claw.)Songs like this had a more terrible effect on the children singing it than on the nation they lamented. Since the revolution, Khomeini (the Supreme Leader of Iran) had declared music itself sin, if it intended pleasure. [1] So lamenting the "enemy" was the only form of music. The year the United States shot down the civilian plane, Khomeini "drank the poison chalice", and signed the peace treaty. Less than a year later, he died. With his death, the untold thousands of children who lost their fathers in the war and were promised him as a father discovered the taste of true abandonment; many of them became what we know today as Basij Militia, headed by the Revolutionary Guards.Paired with thousands of years of monarchistic patriarchy (where Father is King), my birth society in many ways was the teenager revolting against its domestic parent, its foreign parent and itself. In that quest, they taught us to seek science and engineering, and the ultimate weapon. In junior high school physics, building a "Nuclear Deterrent" did not arrive as a top-down fed idea. My classmates wanted it, as a mythical shield to protect themselves and their kind, where a father figure once protected. By early senior high school, many of my classmates won global medals in mathematics and physics. A black magic indeed lurked in the air.The desire of the school authorities to shape the course of this well-spring of dark motives had one fatal flaw. We all came of age, and wanted what their ideology didn't allow: Music. Where knowing sentences from the Quran once decided social order, memorizing lyrics from the latest heavy metal song took over. In the mid-90s, more smuggled rock CDs moved between fingers than beads on a prayer rope. No-one could see it at the time, but the veiling of women under the black robes gave rise to a kind of opposition, invisible. You cannot condemn nature without paying a price, and the price paid by the republic of ideology was a sense of Dual Identity, or a Social Hypocrisy. The people with natural urges became "us", and the status quo became "them"; and the black magic, their way of counting votes of their "children".In a country with thousands of years of patriarchy, when you vote, the father always watches:And his older sons count the votes:And the children continue to seek where this black magic comes from that changes the course of their destiny.I spent my twenties as a Canadian immigrant, and my thirties as an American permanent resident in Silicon Valley. I married a mid-Western woman.I expected a reception from my in-laws similar to the one I received at the border, full of questions: "why did you choose to be born in Iran? how long have you lived here? why are you visiting the United States? Do you intend to visit your birth country ever again? Will you agree to extra biometrics?" Instead, to bond, my American father-in-law took me out on a range to shoot a gun. "I don't even trust myself with a gun! Do you know what they'd think if the word gets out that I held a gun?" I said to him. "It's a free country," he said, "and you're now my son."Early this month I received an invitation to a dinner near Stanford University. Fifteen old high school friends sat at the table. At the head of the table sat the man who was most keen in building the "Nuclear Deterrent" back in high school. He has two daughters, and has lived here for decades. When I asked him about the role of the protector, he said "I'm a good dad."When I was a child, I believed that Americans didn't care about children. I am now an eligible American, and looking forward to having American children.Life, itself, is the black magician.[1] Khomeini bans music from airwaves: Google News Archive Search[2] US Navy shoots down civilian plane killing 290 on board: Iran Air Flight 655

It reminds me of what my teacher said about UPH back when I’m at junior high school (SMP).He said that UPH is acronym for:Universitas Penguras Harta (Wealth Draining University)Uang Papa Habis (So goes Fathers Money)They are actually not that expensive anymore these days, but still the impression is that if you enter UPH (either university or highschool, because most people didn’t know that UPH has a highschool and for most people “Meh, what’s the difference? It’s still UPH”) you’re probably filthy rich, speak english almost like a native, and non muslim (because they are run by a Christian foundation).Side note: I also can’t differentiate UPH College from UPH university until I met their English debate team in the high school Pramita english debate competition in 2015, so apologies…