Overview Christian faith has a long and continuous history in Iran. The period since the Islamic Revolution of 1979 has been particularly stressful, with outbreaks of severe persecution, imprisonment and both judicial and extrajudicial killings.

Speaker Michael Nazir-Ali

About the speaker Monsignor Dr Nazir-Ali is a member of the Ordinariate in the Catholic Church and Prelate to the Holy See. He was the 106th Anglican Bishop of Rochester, for 15 years, until 1 September 2009. He is originally from Asia and was the first Diocesan Bishop in the Church of England born abroad. He was appointed in 1994. Before that he was the General Secretary of CMS from 1989-1994 and before that Bishop of Raiwind in Pakistan. He holds both British and Pakistani citizenship and from 1999 was a member of the House of Lords where he was active in a number of areas of national and international concern. He has both a Christian and a Muslim family background. He is now President of the Oxford Centre for Training, Research, Advocacy and Dialogue (OXTRAD).