Zakaria Botros, a Coptic Priest Unknown in the West, is a "Phenomenon" in the Middle East Bringing Millions to Christ Each Year
Teresa Neumann (March 31, 2008)

"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....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."

(Egypt)—Zakaria Botros is a Coptic priest in Egypt who, though unknown in the West, has been described as a "phenomenon" in the Middle East by reporter Raymond Ibrahim. Why? He is responsible for evangelizing many of the six million Muslim converts to Christianity every year.

According to the National Review report, Botros appears frequently on the uncensored Arabic channel al-Hayat (Life TV), a form of new media that is gaining wild popularity in the Middle East. A "fiery" man who minces no words, Ibrahim says Botros has counted Islam's ten demands on non-Muslims with ten demands of his own. There are times when someone will call Botros' show to argue with him and end up giving their life to Christ over the telephone, live on air.

Also, notes the report, "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."

Ibrahim notes that another reason for Botros's success is that "his polemical technique has proven irrefutable. Each of his episodes has a theme...often expressed as a question. 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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Then, says Ibrahim, Botros "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," says Ibrahim, "the response from the ulema is deafening silence."

Concludes Ibrahim, "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. 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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Source: Raymond Ibrahim - National Review