This Former Muslim Dangerously Escaped Iran To Pursue Judaism, Conservatism in America
William Mehrvarz is not the kind of refugee liberals love to champion.
Born a to Muslim family in Iran, he’s turned his back on the religion of his birth to embrace Judaism. After watching protesters in his home country gunned down by the government, he truly appreciates the freedoms guaranteed in the United States.
But probably worst of all for liberals, he considers himself a “conservative” by American political standards.
In an interview with The Daily Wire, Mehrvarz told the story of his escape from Iran, his current enrollment in Yeshiva University, and how he had his eyes opened to failings of the American left.
Now 26, Mehrvarz told The Daily Wire that he’d first starting doubting the Islamic faith at the age of 13, when he got a Bible in Farsi from a friend who was Christian. In the Old Testament, he saw a different kind of relationship between man and God than the kind he saw in Islam.
“Judaism started with Abraham arguing with God,” Mehrvarz claimed. “Every Jew argues with himself or herself. The idea of questioning is a core value. There is Jewish ideology that says if you have a question ask, I’ll answer you if I can and if I can’t, we can sit down together to try to find an answer.”
His doubts about the Islamic faith troubled his family – his father tried to dissuade him, according to The Daily Wire, by noting the penalties for apostasy. In Iran, apostasy is punishable by death, according to Human Rights Watch.
His doubts about his country’s government grew too, especially after the “Green Revolution” of 2009, when anti-government protesters flooded the streets of Iran’s city’s, only to be met by overwhelming force. (President Barack Obama ignored the violence in Iran in his efforts to reach out to the thuggish mullahs who run the theocracy.)
“I saw with my own eyes, the Green Revolution fail,” he said. “I invested so much emotionally and I also participated in the protests. I saw people getting shot. I cried from tear gas attacks. And it was terrifying.”
Still, Mehrvarz became a secret Jew of a sort, adopting a vegetarian diet so he could avoid non-kosher meats, The Daily Wire reported.
For the outside world, though, according to The Daily Wire, Mehrvarz kept his religious doubts to himself, ultimately marrying a woman who kept up an outward appearance of Muslim piety but had doubts of her own and kept Mehrvarz’s religious beliefs secret.
However, their marriage fell apart after his wife had a miscarriage and, during a family argument, his wife “blurted out” Mehrvarz’s secret, The Daily Wire reported. His sister-in-law called him “a dirty Jew.”
“Someone saw something in me — that I’m a Jew — it was an acknowledgment but then I realized what that acknowledgment meant — the death penalty,” Mehrvarz told The Daily Wire.
He fled the country, first for Armenia, then to the country of Georgia, where he applied for a U.S. tourist visa. That enabled him to get to New York, The Daily Wire recounted, where he applied for asylum.
He began taking conversion classes to become officially Jewish and enrolled at Columbia University. He dropped out because of the expense and enrolled at Yeshiva University, where he is receiving a “substantial” scholarship, according to The Commentator, Yeshiva University’s student newspaper.
But the cost wasn’t the only problem at Columbia.
“Columbia University is very left,” Mehrvarz told The Daily Wire. “I was basically the wrong kind of refugee for people to be interested in. I come from a decent upper-middle-class family in Iran. My father taught me to wear a suit and comb my hair. I always try to look presentable. Some students at Columbia’s campus seemed disappointed I didn’t try to escape starving or bombing, though starving is a concern in Iran now.”
His knowledge of what’s happening in his home country is why Mehrvarz appreciates President Donald Trump’s policies when it comes to the Islamic Republic of Iran.
“The policies I care most about, for obvious reasons, are sanctions on Iran,” he told The Daily Wire. “A new government is the only thing that is going to help the Iranian people, in the long run. Sanctions at least stand a chance of provoking change.”
Observations like that are a reason Mehrvarz didn’t fit the liberal stereotype of a refugee from a Muslim country.
Even worse, from a liberal point of view, he has a view of American politics that makes him appreciate the country, not despise it.
And he considers himself a “conservative” on the American political spectrum, he told The Daily Wire.
“My understanding of conservatism is that it means to seek to hold onto something, to preserve it,” Mehrvarz said.
“I understand that not everything in the United States is perfect or even good, but there are certain American values that are unique or close to unique from a global perspective. When I consider my political conservatism, I am thinking of things like the Bill of Rights, particularly the right to religious freedom and the right to a free press — both are rights which I did not have in Iran.
“I’m not a big fan of tyranny, having grown up under it, and I think that holding to those rights, even when it makes us uncomfortable, prevents the rise of American Ayatollahs and similar.”
That, in a nutshell, is where American conservatives stand.
Contrary to the lies the left peddles, it’s the “liberals” in American politics who try to squelch freedom of speech. It’s the liberals who want to use the government to crush dissent. (Remember the Obama administration’s weaponization of the IRS?)
And it’s liberals who engage in the kind of hero worship that leads to the kind of cult of personality the nation suffered during the eight years of the Barack Obama presidency. That’s a disgrace the mainstream media visited on itself – and the stain will be there for a long time to come.
Educated, independent-thinking refugees like Mehrvarz can see the United States for what it is, with weaknesses to be sure, but with strengths that make it the glory of governments in this world.
“In the United States, there is so much good available in the political system,” he told The Daily Caller. “Seeing what my politically active peers are capable of in local and regional politics is mind-blowing, coming from a country where my politically active peers were gunned down in the streets.”
Those are the kinds of words every American needs to hear.
Liberals, of course, won’t listen. Mehrvarz isn’t their kind of refugee at all.
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