Isaiah 55:11
So shall My word be that goes forth from My mouth; It shall not return to Me void, But it shall accomplish what I please, And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it
Gen 1:3
Then God said, “Let there be light”; and there was light
Matthew 26:26
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, blessed and broke it, and gave it to the disciples and said, “Take, eat; this is My body."
Malachi 1:11
My name will be great among the nations, from the rising to the setting of the sun. In every place incense and pure offerings will be brought to my name, because my name will be great among the nations," says the LORD Almighty.
John 20:23
If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you retain the sins of any, they are retained.
James 5:16
Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective.
James 2:14
What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him?
Luke 20:38
For He is not the God of the dead but of the living, for all live to Him.
Rev 21:27
Nothing impure will ever enter it, nor will anyone who does what is shameful or deceitful, but only those whose names are written in the Lamb's book of life.
1 Cor 3:15
If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss: but he himself shall be saved; yet so as by fire.
Psalm 51:5
Behold, I was brought forth in iniquity, and in sin my mother conceived me.
John 3:5
Jesus answered, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God.
Titus 3:5
Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
1 Timothy 3:15
but if I am delayed, I write so that you may know how you ought to conduct yourself in the house of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth.
Acts 22:16
And now why tarriest thou? arise, and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on the name of the Lord.
Father Zakaria Botros, a favorite Orthodox priest here at CAS, has been stirring up Muslim angst here in the U.S.. Its seems Father Zakaria's radio broadcast is broadcast here in the U.S., as well as to Arabic countries. His ability to cite passages from both the Koran and Haddith that are unflattering of the great prophet has caused a write-in/call-in campaign to stop his broadcast. Wow!
A recent Detroit News article states: "In an Arabic-language broadcast Wednesday on WNZK 680/690 AM, the Rev. Zakariah Boutros said the Muslim prophet Muhammad had engaged in necrophilia and gay sex, according to the Council on American Islamic Relations." The Council on American Islamic Relations, or CAIR as its commonly known in the Christian blogosphere, is avery pro-Islam apologetics agency. CAIR is not without some controversy on its own. The Detroit News article mentions further along "Dawud Walid, of CAIR, which distributed a "national alert" Thursday asking Muslims to contact the radio station to express concerns about the broadcast."
Apparently the offense was Father Botros citing an "Islamic text" that recounted the Prophet Muhammad sleeping in the grave of a dead woman and allowing a man to kiss and caress his chest. Doesn't sound like really sinful stuff to me, but apparently, this is somewhat offensive to Muslims who consider the allegations to defame Muhammad.
Again we encourage those Christian apologists who seek to engage Islam to study Father Zakaria Botros, his apologies, and his sources. The trite charge of "worshipping the moon God" is not effective. Using Islamic sources like the Koran and the Haddith to ask challenging questions is what works.
Father Zakaria Botros must have put out a damaging apologetic against Islam on Middle Eastern TV recently. CAS visitor statistics have doubled this past week and most of the visitors seem to be Islamic, judging from the high bounce rate and keywords. Keywords like "zakaria botros ", "zakaria botros disasters of the koran", "answering christian", "answeringzakaria", and "coptic apologist islam christian" are conspicuous in the CAS analytics.
For those not familiar with Father Zakaria Botros, Father Botros is a Coptic priest. Not Catholic, but Eastern Oriental Orthodox. Father Botros engages Islam through an Arabic language satellite television program watched by thousands (if not millions) of Muslims. Father Botros is very popular among everyone but the Imams and Islamic apologists.
As previously mentioned, Father Zakaria Botros has been very effective in challenging Islamic clerics head on with some very difficult arguements regarding the Koran and Islamic teaching. So much so, that many Islamic regions have chosen to retaliate physically against Christians, Copts in particular. Please remember Father Zakaria Botros and our Coptic brothers and sisters in Christ in your prayers.
Update
As several CAS commentors have noted, Father Zakaria Botros is Orthodox, but not Eastern Orthodox. Father Botros, as a Coptic Orthodox, is part of the Oriental Orthodox Church. Wikipedia has a good introductory article on the Coptic Orthodox Church of Alexandria.
To the Muslim apologist who searched on "answering Zakaria Botros", I can only say: "Good luck with that! Inshallah." Like John Corapi, Zakaria Botros seems to have been given the rare charisma of apostolic preaching. That's pretty much a no win situation for the Muslim debating Zakaria.
A good many video clips of Zakaria Botros and the Islamic apologists attempting to answer Zakaria have been appearing on YouTube. Most of the clips are video captures from Arabic television stations. Very few clips are in English. Here's a good Zakaria Botros video for first timers that has been overdubbed in English.
Again, note that Zakaria does not waste time and energy arguing about Moon gods or false gods, but goes straight for the many inconvenient, and often embarassing, truths that have developed in Islam over the 1300 years since Mohammed. If you as a Christian seek to engage Islam, you need to spend time reading and studying Zakaria Botros.
As CAS reported earlier, Zakaria Botros has a website and makes available many of his apologetics resources in English for those Christian apologists engaging Islam. Forget the feable "Moon god" and "false god" arguements and go learn some of Zakaria's hard hitting lines of questioning that are causing much grief among Islamic apologists. So much so that our Coptic brothers and sisters in Christ are bearing physical abuse for the sake of the Gospel. Please keep Zakaria Botros and our Coptic brothers and sisters in Christ in your prayers.
VirtueOnline, an Anglican blog, has a very good post on Fr. Zakaria Botros, a Coptic priest, who is having very good results with his own TV show aimed at Muslims in Arabic lands. In fact, Fr. Zakaria is having so much success that he has drawn a lot of Isamic hatred and disdain.
While many of us Christian Apologists don't have access to satelitte TV or are fluent in Arabic, we can adopt the third leg of Fr. Zakaria's system -- irrefutable polemics.
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.
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.
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.
Note that Fr. Zakaria is not attacking Muslims for worshippind a false "moon" God or for disbelieving in the triune nature of God. Anyone seeking to engage Muslims and Islamic clerics in Christian apologetics would do well to read this article and to study Fr. Zakaria's methods and arguements. The article includes a link to Fr. Zakaria's website.
