TEHRAN (ABNA)  -Director of non-Iranian pilgrims Affairs of Imam Reza (AS) Holy Shrine said on Tuesday that 12 foreign Christian tourists converted to Islam at the holy shrine in the outgoing Iranian year.
Mohammad Javad Hasheminejad said that eight of them were ladies from Germany, Sweden, Belarus, Poland, US, Denmark and Russia and four men from Norway, Cameroon, The Netherlands and Ireland.
He said that the new Muslims are between 21 and 51 years old and none of them are living in Iran, except for spouses of three of them are living in Iran.
The director of the holy shrine added that all of these persons have academic education and by reasons such as personal interests, studying Islamic books, curiosity about Islam and having Iranian or Malaysian friends, visiting the holy shrine and feeling the spirituality of the holy shrine were encouraging to convert to Islam.
Hasheminejad said that 4,500,000 non-Iranian tourists have visited the holy shrine this year, among them around 100,000 tourists were not Muslim.
He stressed that the latest developments in the Middle East region, encouraged the interest in paying pilgrimage to the holy shrine and the number of pilgrims has been on a growing trend.
Around 25 million pilgrims visit Mashhad, venue of Imam Reza (AS) Holy Shrine, annually.