Posted on 10/29/2008 5:58:50 AM PDT by NYer
Last week I was supposed to interview Father Zakaria Boutros on my television show. It would have been the second time I had spoken to this gentle, thoughtful man, a leading figure of the Egyptian Coptic Christian community and now obliged to live in exile in the US after twice being arrested in his homeland. But on this occasion the interview was suddenly cancelled. A $60-million bounty was just put on his head by Muslim extremists in Iran and Saudi Arabia, al-Qaeda were thought to be intent on fulfilling the fatwa and it was considered too dangerous to allow him to travel to Canada. The fact that the United States government bounty on Osama bin Laden is a mere $25-million rather puts the case of this disarmingly gentle and jovial priest into proportion.
Because while he is anonymous to most North Americans, Boutros is famous or notorious throughout North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia, where his daily television broadcasts attract enormous audiences and his Web site millions of hits. His style is uncompromising. Speaking in Egyptian accented Arabic, and fluent in Islamic scholarship and the various sub-cultures of the Muslim world, he carefully unwraps the layers of the Koran and the life and teachings of Muhammad and presents his viewers with a virtually unprecedented critique of their faith. It's the combination of accessibility and originality that makes him so threatening to militant Islam.
"We know people are leaving Islam because of what I say and they know people are leaving Islam because of what I say," he explains. A long pause, then: "People in the West simply don't understand the significance of this in a world that has not and probably will not embrace pluralism. The Islamic response is not to argue with me but to try to kill me."
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalpost.com ...
This is a spectacular book. It has made quite an impression on our parish.
Our newest parishioner is a Coptic girl who came over here (six weeks ago) to marry an American fellow, a recent convert to Orthodoxy and a new parishioner himself, whom she met back in Alexandria.
This is a spectacular book. It has made quite an impression on our parish.
Our newest parishioner is a Coptic girl who came over here (six weeks ago) to marry an American fellow, a recent convert to Orthodoxy and a new parishioner himself, whom she met back in Alexandria.
Orthodox ping.
Thank you each for the ping, a timely reminder to remember Father Zakaria in prayer.
Should we lose the election next week, I wouldn’t give a nickel for this Holy Man’s chances of survival through the next year.
No doubt the funds needed for his protection would have to be redistributed.
There’s a lot more at stake in this than just our taxes and economy......
There always has been, but we just realized it -- hopefully!
God protect him.
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