“You cannot talk religion here.”

A Christian Pastor, who is a Refugee From Iran and a former Muslim was arrested for sharing his testimony in Minnesota.

Late last month, Ramin Parsa, a Christian pastor who fled Iran as a religious refugee, was arrested for privately sharing his faith in the Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. 

Parsa said, “I came to the U.S. as a political and religious, refugee. They oppressed me for my faith in Iran. I was stabbed in Iran.”

In Minnesota, he was handcuffed to a metal chair for four hours without water, and later charged with trespassing.

He said of the arrest, “These things might happen in other countries, oppressive dictatorships, but not in America,” 

Parsa, a pastor at Redemptive Love Ministries International traveled to Minnesota for two days to visit two different churches. He went to the Mall of America with an elder from one of the churches, and with the elder’s 14-year-old son. Shortly after entering the mall, he struck up a conversation with two Somali-American women in a coffee shop.

He said, “When we came out of the coffee shop, three guards were waiting for us, and they arrested me right there. They came after me and arrested me, and said, ‘You cannot talk religion here.'”

Parsa told security he was a pastor, they told him, “We arrested pastors before,'” Parsa added“It was something normal for them, they were used to it.”

Meanwhile, the two Somali-American women who wanted to hear the pastor’s story argued with the woman who reported him to security. They defended Parsa.