Yoga practitioner in Canada faces possibility of execution in Iran

From People of Shambhala.

“I had a good job in Iran, but I came here [to Canada] and worked hard so I could know what it’s like to live in freedom,” says Kavoos Soofi Shiaoosh, 43.

He arrived in Toronto, in 2004, on a renewable student visa, but started a painting business after it expired. Shiaoosh also changed his religious views during this time. He renounced Islam, and took up a new faith.

Shiaoosh says that, growing up Kurdish, but still Muslim, in Iran, he had always thought about religion.

Living in Canada Shiaoosh eventually came across Sahaja Yoga meditation. Based on traditional Hindu chakra meditation, Sahaja describes itself as, “a method of meditation which brings a breakthrough in the evolution of human awareness.”

He soon began telling his friends about Sahaja, and later joined a Facebook group called “I am not a Muslim.”

After the 2009 Iranian elections he campaigned against the regime in Tehran and its brutal crackdown of the pro-democracy movements, and the rape and torture of young demonstrators by the clerical militia, Basiji. Shiaoosh even compared Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei to Adolf Hitler.

Now an apostate and an anti-Tehran activist, in 2008 Shiaoosh claimed asylum, based on the certainty of torture and execution if he were ever to return to Iran. It seemed a clear cut case. But a year later, immigration had rejected Shiaoosh’s claim for refugee status.

In January, he was summoned to read more.

One Reply to “Yoga practitioner in Canada faces possibility of execution in Iran”

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