Zakaria Botros is a conservative television star with a huge audience. He is even more hated by his political enemies than Rush Limbaugh and Hillary Clinton put together, if you can believe that. At least one newspaper has labeled Botros: “Public Enemy Number One.”
So why haven’t you heard about this guy? It is probably because you do not watch Arab television. On channel al-Hayat, or “Life TV,” you will find Father Botros, a Coptic priest, discussing theology in a way that embarrasses—and enrages—Muslim leaders. His television talks are leading not only to mass conversions, but to the disempowering of radical Islam.
Recently in National Review Online, Raymond Ibrahim described the work of Father Botros. He is a bearded, bespectacled cleric who sports a large wooden cross, and his specialty is examining “little-known but embarrassing aspects of Islamic law and tradition,” Ibrahim writes. Because he speaks and reads classical Arabic, Botros can “report to the average Muslim on the discrepancies” and what Ibrahim calls “the affronts to moral common sense found” within Islamic teachings. Satellite TV and the Internet mean Butros can question Islam’s teachings in Arabic—the language of 200 million Muslims—without fear of reprisal.
Drawing on the Socratic method, Botros will ask such questions as: “Are women inferior to men in Islam?” “Did Mohammed [really] say that adulterous female monkeys should be stoned?” And, “Does sharia really teach that women must breastfeed strange men?”
Botros cites chapter and verse, so to speak, of Islamic sources, and then politely invites Islamic scholars to respond. “More often than not,” Ibrahim writes, “the response is deafening silence.” Even worse, religious experts have at times been forced to agree with Botros—“which has led to some amusing (and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.”
Naturally, this drives the sheiks crazy—which is probably why there is a rumored $5 million price on his head.
Botros’s ultimate goal is “to draw Muslims away from the dead legalism of sharia law to the spirituality of Christianity.” In doing so, he is not only saving souls, but cutting at the very heart of radical Islam.
What Western critics fail to appreciate, Ibrahim says, is that the West will not disempower radical Islam by offering Muslims democracy, capitalism, secularism, materialism, feminism—or any other “ism.” Instead, we must offer them “something theocentric and spiritually satisfying.”
This is why, at the end of each program, Botros reads from the Bible and invites his listeners to follow Christ. That he is successful in this endeavor is acknowledged by none other than al-Jazeera, which complains of Botros’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world.
Botros offers a great example of why we Christians must learn our own doctrines, along with those of other religions: so that we can lovingly reason with people and draw them into the kingdom of God.
Tune in tomorrow for more on how you can witness to Muslims—even if you do not star in your own television show. And do not forget to pray for the safety of “Public Enemy Number One,” who is doing a great work for the kingdom—in the heart of radical Islam.
This is part one of a two-part series.
_________________________________________________
From BreakPoint®, April 22, 2008, Copyright 2008, Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with the permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. All rights reserved. May not be reproduced or distributed without the express written permission of Prison Fellowship Ministries. “BreakPoint®” and “Prison Fellowship Ministries®” are registered trademarks of Prison Fellowship
RSS
Here is Zakaria Botros website.
http://www.islameyat.com/english/audio/father_zakaria_botros/questions_about_faith.htm
Click on: #1 Doctrine of Trinity. This was good to see his showing that God is one and that the Trinity is three in one. But at the end he is pointing out that the Jews/Christian Lord God Almighty is the same is in the Quran. If this is true then why does the Quran say that the rocks will cry out to cut off the Jews heads and that Allah hates the Jews and Christians?
To me this is a contradictory here between the Holy Bible and the Quran.
2 Questions for Islam
1. Islam claim that they adore the God of Abraham. Yet Abraham interceded for Sodom and Gomorrah. Abraham did not go to Sodom and Gomorrah in the name of God and begin to submit them by the sword....how can the God of Abraham be the same as the God of Mohammed...if Abraham was and intercessor, as was Jesus...and Jesus says that Abraham looked to Him as the fulfillment of His face...not mohammed...
2. When Abraham was about to sacrifice his son Isaac, the God of Abraham stopped him from doing so and gave Abraham a ram in Isaacs place... How can Muslims say that they serve the same God as Abraham, when the god of mohammed calls them to kill and be killed for him...and are assured to enter his paradise?
As regards islam, Islam is a revealed religion and the way it was revealed must be made known, because there lays the key to understanding Islam. The following information can be easily accessed in the West with little effort and research.
When Mohammed was contacted by the spirit (Jibrail) in the cave he was convinced he had been contacted by a harmful (evil) spirit and returned very distressed to his wife Khadijah, who thought otherwise, and to reassure Mohammed, she took him to her cousin Waraqa ibn Naufal, who, allegedly, was "a very old man who knew the Scriptures of the Jews and Christians" and on this old man's OPINION , the spirit who had contacted Mohammed was declared as coming from God and that Mohammed was to become the Prophet of his people! (pages 10 and 11 of the introduction to the English translation of the Holy Quran by Mohammed Marmaduke Pickthall). If this old man really knew the Christian Scriptures he would have told Mohammed that he had been contacted by an evil spirit (as Mohammed had correctly thought when the spirit had first appeared to him) on the basis of the biblical teaching found in the New Testament in the letter to the Galatians 1:8 where it is stated ..."if an angel from heaven should preach a gospel other than the one we preached (Jesus' gospel) let him be eternally condemned"...
To be brief... the Koran was revealed by a false spirit (a demon) as the translator Marmaduke Pickthall so unwittingly gives testimony to in his introduction of the Holy Quran page 11, 3rd paragraph: "the words which came to him (Mohammed) when in a state of trance are held sacred by the Muslims and are never confounded with those which he uttered when no physical change was apparent in him. (during his trance, they covered mohammed with a sheet...do you know why?)
The former are the Sacred Book (the Koran); the latter the Hadith or Sunnah...” with the above statement Pickthall is confirming that the Koran was recited by Mohammed while in a state of trace or in other words under demonic possession. Consequently, it should not surprise us that when a person starts believing in the Koran, a demonic product, he turns evil. In the New Testament in the letter to the Ephesians 4:30 ..." God's Holy Spirit... gets rid of all bitterness, passion, anger... hateful feelings of any sort... instead makes you kind and tender hearted... forgiving one another... as God has forgiven you through Christ." This Spirit is not the spirit that leads practicing muslims to become suicide bombers .
As Christians in the West we have a great opportunity and obligation to lovingly approach our Muslim neighbours with the Good News of the true Jesus so that their eyes may be opened and step from darkness into light.