Crucified Again: Exposing Islam's New War on Christians by Raymond Ibrahim Read Free Book Online

accordance with Islamic law.” When St. Francis pointedly asked the sultan to convert to Christianity, al-Kamil confessed, “I could not do that. My people would stone me.” (Indeed, the sultan was eventually attacked “for his tolerant attitude towards Christians and was accused of failing to be a ‘fervent Muslim.’”) 17 This is a theme that recurs regularly throughout Muslim history. Centuries earlier, as recorded in the “Dialogue of the Monk of Bet Hale with an Arab Notable,” the latter is recorded as saying, “I testify that were it not for fear of the government and of shame before men, many [Muslims] would become Christians.” 18
    While St. Francis managed to enter the lions’ den and emerge alive, other monks sent to the Muslim world—such as the six “Moroccan Martyrs,” who were imprisoned, tortured, and beheaded by Morocco’s sultan himself for preaching Christ in 1220—did not fare as well.
    Nearly a millennium after the meeting between the Christian saint and the Egyptian sultan, there is still little freedom for Christians who wish to share the Gospel with Muslims. Consider, for instance, the life and exploits of Father Zakaria Botros. 19 A Coptic Christian priest who has spent his life proselytizing Muslims—as his elder brother before him did, until he was murdered and his tongue severed—Father Zakaria’s experiences mirror those of St. Francis. According to Defying Death: Zakaria Botros, Apostle to Islam , after the priest began preaching to Muslims in Egypt, he was imprisoned and tortured; when he began baptizing Muslims, his life was deemed forfeit. He eventually managed to escape to the West. 20
    Undeterred and now in his late seventies, he has his own satellite station, al-Fady TV, dedicated to scrutinizing Islam and preaching Christianity. And just like St. Francis, Father Zakaria constantly invites Islam’s scholars and clerics to debate him—only to receive death threats, including a multi-million dollar bounty on his head. Because he has publicized many unflattering things about the Muslim prophet—things that many Muslims never knew—responses have included live Muslim callers hysterically promising to find the priest and cut his head off.
    Like the Egyptian sultan who concluded that he could not convert because “My people would stone me,” many Muslim converts appearing on and calling in to his show reveal that their apostasy from Islam has put them in grave danger. Many are outcasts; many are in hiding; and others are on the run for their lives, often fleeing from their own families.
    The effects of such “multimedia proselytization” are considerable. A few years back, Al Jazeera even aired a segment highlighting what it characterized as an “unprecedented evangelical raid.” Other stations, like Haya TV (“Life TV”) air thought-provoking programs such as Su’al Jari’ (“Daring Question”), hosted by Brother Rashid, a Muslim apostate to Christianity, and Al Dalil (“The Proof”), hosted by Brother Wahid. From TV and computer screens they all effectively but safely confront Muslims on the truths of Islam vis-à-vis Christianity. If the many callers to these shows—often Muslims who have converted to Christianity, many clandestinely—are any indication, multimedia proselytization has been relatively successful despite the consequences apostates face.

WHY CHRISTIANS ARE SINGLED OUT
     
    Having examined the nature of apostasy, blasphemy, and proselytism in Islamic law, let us now consider how and why it is that Christians are especially prone to being persecuted by Islam’s anti-freedom laws. There are three main reasons:
    1. Christianity is the largest religion in the world . There are Christians practically everywhere around the globe, including in much of the Muslim world. Moreover, because much of the territory that Islam seized was originally Christian—including the Middle East and North Africa, the region that today is called the “Arab