by Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n
FrontPageMagazine.com<\/p>\n
Father Zakaria Botros, also known as Islam’s “Public Enemy #1<\/a>,” is back.<\/p>\n From around 2005-2010, this 76 year-old Coptic priest was Islam’s bane. Appearing weekly on Arabic satellite, where he was viewed by an estimated 60 million people worldwide, mostly Muslims, he meticulously exposed any number of theological problems with Islam \u2014 all from Islam’s own books \u2014 while simultaneously evangelizing from his own book, the Bible.<\/p>\n His\u00a0mission<\/a>\u00a0“is to attack Islam, not to attack Muslims but to save them because they are deceived. As I love Muslims, I hate Islam.”<\/p>\n And he has been effective: Mass conversions to Christianity, open and clandestine, have resulted. Indeed, years back\u00a0Al-Jazeera<\/em>\u00a0aired a segment complaining about Fr. Zakaria’s “unprecedented evangelical raid” on the Muslim world; similarly, one Sheikh Ahmad al-Qatani lamented that as many as six million Muslims annually “apostatize” to Christianity.<\/p>\n Unsurprisingly, Fr. Zakaria’s exploits caused al Qaeda to proclaim him “one of the most wanted infidels in the world<\/a>,” putting a $60 million bounty on his head; undeterred, the priest kept going, his viewers and converts multiplying by the week.<\/p>\n Then, in May 2010, after a particularly\u00a0graphic episode<\/a>\u00a0on Muhammad, his shows inexplicably stopped airing. His enemies exulted. Muslim leaders, preachers, and sheikhs appeared on TV, gleefully announcing that Allah had silenced the great enemy of Islam.<\/p>\n Yet, over a year after his many foes \u2014 external and internal, Muslim and non-Muslim \u2014 have managed to stifle him, Fr. Zakaria is back on satellite, now with his own station\u00a0Fady TV<\/a>\u00a0(Redeemer TV), “a channel for those searching for the truth.”<\/p>\n Though other Islam-critics and evangelists have appeared on Arabic satellite since, many with a good following, it is clear that people have not forgotten the priest, the original trailblazer of open and honest talk on Islam \u2014 the original scourge of Islam.<\/p>\n Watching the first episode of his new show, “Knowledge of the Truth,” was like witnessing a reunion between a lost flock and its spiritual shepherd. Viewer after viewer \u2014 Christians and Muslims, much more of the latter \u2014 called in to express how much they had sorely missed the evangelist, and how happy they were to see him again, some in tears, others in joyous laughter.<\/p>\n And while their words were full of sincere and enthusiastic praise \u2014 many insisted that he is a living saint, others a modern day St. Paul \u2014 it was only when an elderly-sounding woman asserted that everyone must support Fr. Zakaria, not for\u00a0his<\/em>\u00a0sake, but for the sake of his work liberating Muslims from bondage, that the normally stoic Zakaria broke down in tears.<\/p>\n Why is Fr. Zakaria so loved \u2014 and hated? For starters, as a native Arabic-speaker, he takes his message straight to the heart of the Islamic world; as a man of God, he takes his message straight to the heart of Muslims \u2014 something the Western approach cannot achieve.<\/p>\n You see, while Western critics are limited to making secular arguments against specific aspects of Islam \u2014 for instance, that it is illiberal, intolerant, sexist \u2014 he makes spiritual arguments against the very foundations of the religion.<\/p>\n This is not to say that Western polemics are not beneficial; they are, in that they awaken Western peoples to the nature of Islam. However, arguing or even proving that Islam falls short of Western\/secular standards has little impact on Muslims \u2014 except perhaps to make them more tenacious of their faith (the inevitable result of comparing apples and oranges).<\/p>\n But an attack on the veracity of the religion itself \u2014 an attack articulated through a\u00a0spiritual<\/em>\u00a0as opposed to a\u00a0secular<\/em>\u00a0paradigm \u2014 must be confronted by Muslims.<\/p>\n In short, Fr. Zakaria’s success rests in the fact that he fights fire with fire; that he speaks the same language Muslims do \u2014 not just literally, Arabic, but more importantly, figuratively, the language of religion and faith, the language of God. He cannot simply be ignored.<\/p>\n For example, during this, his first episode, he discussed\u00a0Sheikh Huwaini<\/a>‘s recent assertions that Islam advocates plundering, enslaving, buying, and selling infidels. Many have written about this anecdote either to show that Islam is intrinsically violent, or that “radical Islamism” is spreading, or that Islamic teachings are incompatible with the West.<\/p>\n But Fr. Zakaria takes it a step further \u2014 takes it right to the heart of the matter. After asserting that “God created mankind in his image,” he sincerely addressed his Muslim viewers: “Would God\u00a0truly<\/em>\u00a0want you to kill your neighbor, to enslave him? Would the Almighty\u00a0truly<\/em>\u00a0want believers to buy and sell other human beings like animals? Think people! Use your minds, listen to your hearts \u2014 for your souls are at stake!”<\/p>\n The same reason the secular mindset may find this approach too simplistic or “unsophisticated” is the same reason it is far from\u00a0comprehending Islam<\/a>.<\/p>\n Still in its early stages of development and financially challenged, Fady TV has yet to reach the Middle East, where the real battle for souls is waged, though the priest is hopeful. The station is set to air entire programs dedicated to examining various topics in depth, including the Koran, the Hadith, Muhammad, and Allah.<\/p>\n As I previously did, I plan on following and summarizing Fr. Zakaria’s programs. See for example “The Perverse Sexual Habits of the Prophet<\/a>” and “Was Muhammad a Messenger from God or Satan?<\/a>” for a sampling.<\/p>\n For more information on this singular priest, read his exclusive 2009\u00a0FPM interview<\/a>, wherein he discussed his life story, including the torments he experienced for preaching to Muslims in Egypt. Also, to get a feel for his very “non-dhimmi” approach, watch his famous “Ten Demands of Islam<\/a>.”<\/p>\n \u00a92011 Raymond Ibrahim<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by Raymond Ibrahim FrontPageMagazine.com Father Zakaria Botros, also known as Islam’s “Public Enemy #1,” is back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[29,227],"tags":[161,192,1017,706,1060,1016,58,705],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-EA","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":5357,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islams-public-enemy-1\/","url_meta":{"origin":2516,"position":0},"title":"Islam’s Public Enemy #1","author":"victorhanson","date":"April 15, 2008","format":false,"excerpt":"Coptic priest Zakaria Botros fights fire with fire. by Raymond Ibrahim National Review Online Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest\u00a0Zakaria Botros\u00a0\u2014 named Islam\u2019s \u201cPublic Enemy #1\u201d by the Arabic newspaper,\u00a0al-Insan al-Jadid\u2014 has been making waves in the Islamic world. Along with fellow missionaries \u2014 mostly Muslim\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2587,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/continuity-st-francis-of-assisi-fr-zakaria-botros-and-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":2516,"position":1},"title":"Continuity: St. Francis of Assisi, Fr. Zakaria Botros, and Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"July 19, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch While not formally connected, two books I recently finished reading \u2014\u00a0St. Francis of Assisi and the Conversion of Muslims\u00a0and\u00a0Defying Death: Zakaria Botross, Apostle to Islam\u00a0\u2014 complement each other very well, specifically by establishing continuity between medieval and modern Islam, and, in so doing, demonstrating that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1561,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/what-did-you-say-about-muhammad\/","url_meta":{"origin":2516,"position":2},"title":"What Did You Say About Muhammad?","author":"victorhanson","date":"June 12, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim PJ Media Which is more likely to elicit an irate Muslim response: 1) public cartoons of the Muslim prophet Muhammad, or 2) public proclamations that Muhammad was a bisexual, sometime transvestite and necrophile, who enjoyed sucking on the tongues of children, commanded a woman to \u201cbreastfeed\u201d an\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Raymond Ibrahim"","block_context":{"text":"Raymond Ibrahim","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/our-contributors\/raymond-ibrahim\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":430,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/religious-defamation-laws-would-ban-islam\/","url_meta":{"origin":2516,"position":3},"title":"‘Religious Defamation’ Laws Would Ban Islam","author":"victorhanson","date":"September 29, 2012","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Frontpage Magazine As the Islamic world, in the guise of the 57-member state Organization of Islamic Cooperation, continues to push for the enforcement of \"religious defamation\" laws in the international arena \u2014 theoretically developed to protect all religions from insult, but in reality made for Islam \u2014\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Islam"","block_context":{"text":"Islam","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/islam\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1454,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/islams-predictability-apostasy-execution-and-lies\/","url_meta":{"origin":2516,"position":4},"title":"Islam’s Predictability: Apostasy, Execution, and Lies","author":"victorhanson","date":"November 15, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Jihad Watch As one ponders the fate of Yousef Nadarkhani, the Iranian pastor on death row for refusing to renounce Christianity, it is well to reflect that, for all the talk that Islam is perpetually \"misunderstood,\" it is actually immensely predictable and consistent; not only do its\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Iran"","block_context":{"text":"Iran","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/the-world\/the-middle-east\/iran\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1864,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/how-taqiyya-alters-islams-rules-of-war-defeating-jihadist-terrorism\/","url_meta":{"origin":2516,"position":5},"title":"How Taqiyya Alters Islam’s Rules of War: Defeating Jihadist Terrorism","author":"victorhanson","date":"January 31, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Raymond Ibrahim Middle East Quarterly\u00a0(Winter 2010) Islam must seem a paradoxical religion to non-Muslims. 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