- Though he is little known in the West, Coptic priest
Zakaria Botros -- named Islam's "Public Enemy #1" by the Arabic
newspaper, al-Insan al-Jadid -- has been making waves in the Islamic world.
Along with fellow missionaries -- mostly Muslim converts -- he appears
frequently on the Arabic channel al-Hayat (i.e., "Life TV").
There, he addresses controversial topics of theological significance --
free from the censorship imposed by Islamic authorities or self-imposed
through fear of the zealous mobs who fulminated against the infamous cartoons
of Mohammed. Botros's excurses on little-known but embarrassing aspects
of Islamic law and tradition have become a thorn in the side of Islamic
leaders throughout the Middle East.
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- Botros is an unusual figure onscreen: robed, with a huge
cross around his neck, he sits with both the Koran and the Bible in easy
reach. Egypt's Copts -- members of one of the oldest Christian communities
in the Middle East -- have in many respects come to personify the demeaning
Islamic institution of "dhimmitude" (which demands submissiveness
from non-Muslims, in accordance with Koran 9:29). But the fiery Botros
does not submit, and minces no words. He has famously made of Islam "ten
demands," whose radical nature he uses to highlight Islam's own radical
demands on non-Muslims.
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- The result? Mass conversions to Christianity -- if clandestine
ones. The very public conversion of high-profile Italian journalist Magdi
Allam -- who was baptized by Pope Benedict in Rome on Saturday -- is only
the tip of the iceberg. Indeed, Islamic cleric Ahmad al-Qatani stated on
al-Jazeera TV a while back that some six million Muslims convert to Christianity
annually, many of them persuaded by Botros's public ministry. More recently,
al-Jazeera noted Life TV's "unprecedented evangelical raid" on
the Muslim world. Several factors account for the Botros phenomenon.
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- First, the new media -- particularly satellite TV and
the Internet (the main conduits for Life TV) -- have made it possible for
questions about Islam to be made public without fear of reprisal. It is
unprecedented to hear Muslims from around the Islamic world -- even from
Saudi Arabia, where imported Bibles are confiscated and burned -- call
into the show to argue with Botros and his colleagues, and sometimes, to
accept Christ.
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- Secondly, Botros's broadcasts are in Arabic -- the language
of some 200 million people, most of them Muslim. While several Western
writers have published persuasive critiques of Islam, their arguments go
largely unnoticed in the Islamic world. Botros's mastery of classical Arabic
not only allows him to reach a broader audience, it enables him to delve
deeply into the voluminous Arabic literature -- much of it untapped by
Western writers who rely on translations -- and so report to the average
Muslim on the discrepancies and affronts to moral common sense found within
this vast corpus.
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- A third reason for Botros's success is that his polemical
technique has proven irrefutable. Each of his episodes has a theme -- from
the pressing to the esoteric -- often expressed as a question (e.g., "Is
jihad an obligation for all Muslims?"; "Are women inferior to
men in Islam?"; "Did Mohammed say that adulterous female monkeys
should be stoned?" "Is drinking the urine of prophets salutary
according to sharia?"). To answer the question, Botros meticulously
quotes -- always careful to give sources and reference numbers -- from
authoritative Islamic texts on the subject, starting from the Koran; then
from the canonical sayings of the prophet -- the Hadith; and finally from
the words of prominent Muslim theologians past and present -- the illustrious
ulema.
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- Typically, Botros's presentation of the Islamic material
is sufficiently detailed that the controversial topic is shown to be an
airtight aspect of Islam. Yet, however convincing his proofs, Botros does
not flatly conclude that, say, universal jihad or female inferiority are
basic tenets of Islam. He treats the question as still open -- and humbly
invites the ulema, the revered articulators of sharia law, to respond and
show the error in his methodology. He does demand, however, that their
response be based on "al-dalil we al-burhan," -- "evidence
and proof," one of his frequent refrains -- not shout-downs or sophistry.
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- More often than not, the response from the ulema is deafening
silence -- which has only made Botros and Life TV more enticing to Muslim
viewers. The ulema who have publicly addressed Botros's conclusions often
find themselves forced to agree with him -- which has led to some amusing
(and embarrassing) moments on live Arabic TV.
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- Botros spent three years bringing to broad public attention
a scandalous -- and authentic -- hadith stating that women should "breastfeed"
strange men with whom they must spend any amount of time. A leading hadith
scholar, Abd al-Muhdi, was confronted with this issue on the live talk
show of popular Arabic host Hala Sirhan. Opting to be truthful, al-Muhdi
confirmed that going through the motions of breastfeeding adult males is,
according to sharia, a legitimate way of making married women "forbidden"
to the men with whom they are forced into contact -- the logic being that,
by being "breastfed," the men become like "sons" to
the women and therefore can no longer have sexual designs on them.
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- To make matters worse, Ezzat Atiyya, head of the Hadith
department at al-Azhar University -- Sunni Islam's most authoritative institution
-- went so far as to issue a fatwa legitimatizing "Rida' al-Kibir"
(sharia's term for "breastfeeding the adult"), which prompted
such outrage in the Islamic world that it was subsequently recanted.
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- Botros played the key role in exposing this obscure and
embarrassing issue and forcing the ulema to respond. Another guest on Hala
Sirhan's show, Abd al-Fatah, slyly indicated that the entire controversy
was instigated by Botros: "I know you all [fellow panelists] watch
that channel and that priest and that none of you [pointing at Abd al-Muhdi]
can ever respond to him, since he always documents his sources!"
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- Incapable of rebutting Botros, the only strategy left
to the ulema (aside from a rumored $5-million bounty on his head) is to
ignore him. When his name is brought up, they dismiss him as a troublemaking
liar who is backed by -- who else? -- international "Jewry."
They could easily refute his points, they insist, but will not deign to
do so. That strategy may satisfy some Muslims, but others are demanding
straightforward responses from the ulema.
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- The most dramatic example of this occurred on another
famous show on the international station, Iqra. The host, Basma -- a conservative
Muslim woman in full hijab -- asked two prominent ulema, including Sheikh
Gamal Qutb, one-time grand mufti of al-Azhar University, to explain the
legality of the Koranic verse (4:24) that permits men to freely copulate
with captive women. She repeatedly asked: "According to sharia, is
slave-sex still applicable?" The two ulema would give no clear answer
-- dissembling here, going off on tangents there. Basma remained adamant:
Muslim youth were confused, and needed a response, since "there is
a certain channel and a certain man who has discussed this issue over twenty
times and has received no response from you."
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- The flustered Sheikh Qutb roared, "low-life people
like that must be totally ignored!" and stormed off the set. He later
returned, but refused to admit that Islam indeed permits sex-slaves, spending
his time attacking Botros instead. When Basma said "Ninety percent
of Muslims, including myself, do not understand the issue of concubinage
in Islam and are having a hard time swallowing it," the sheikh responded,
"You don't need to understand." As for Muslims who watch and
are influenced by Botros, he barked, "Too bad for them! If my son
is sick and chooses to visit a mechanic, not a doctor -- that's his problem!"
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- But the ultimate reason for Botros's success is that
-- unlike his Western counterparts who criticize Islam from a political
standpoint -- his primary interest is the salvation of souls. He often
begins and concludes his programs by stating that he loves all Muslims
as fellow humans and wants to steer them away from falsehood to Truth.
To that end, he doesn't just expose troubling aspects of Islam. Before
concluding every program, he quotes pertinent biblical verses and invites
all his viewers to come to Christ.
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- Botros's motive is not to incite the West against Islam,
promote "Israeli interests," or "demonize" Muslims,
but to draw Muslims away from the dead legalism of sharia to the spirituality
of Christianity. Many Western critics fail to appreciate that, to disempower
radical Islam, something theocentric and spiritually satisfying -- not
secularism, democracy, capitalism, materialism, feminism, etc. -- must
be offered in its place. The truths of one religion can only be challenged
and supplanted by the truths of another. And so Father Zakaria Botros has
been fighting fire with fire.
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- http://www.aina.org/news/20080325163204.htm
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