"What can I do?" he asked. "The converts just keep coming. What can I do when people keep coming to me, saying that they want to become Christians?
"Here's an example," he continued. "Someone will come to me saying that he believes God had a Son who came to earth, and He was crucified with nails driven into His hands; but He was resurrected to life, and by believing in Him all our sins can be forgiven."
"Come, come, Rev. Abdul Noor, you don't believe that!" the police officer interrupted, his traditional Muslim sensitivities shocked.
"Yes, I do! That is exactly what I preach from my pulpit," the pastor answered. "So if somebody comes along who is just as 'mad' as I am and believes these things, how can I say no to him and not baptize him?"
Eventually the security official just shook his head. "I could arrest you all," he told the minister's son-in-law as the group of detained church members left the station. "But I'm afraid of your father-in-law."
Paying the Price
Menes Abdul Noor puzzles over such statements. Eliciting the fearful respect of government authorities was something he never would have anticipated when, at age 20, he first took a tiny village pastorate in Upper Egypt, following his father and grandfather into the Presbyterian ministry.
"I have felt for the past 20 years that my life was endangered," Abdul Noor told Charisma. Once, the security police told him that they would arrange to have a car hit and kill him sometime when he was walking along the street. Another time they said his church would be set on fire, and the fire department would be told not to come.
"We will blame the Muslim fundamentalists for it, so we will be rid of both of you!" the authorities promised.
With a shredding machine behind his desk and only innocuous information conveyed over his telephone, fax and e-mail lines, discretion has become second nature in Abdul Noor's ministry. Nodding at his cellular phone, he observes, "That's switched off, but if the authorities are curious enough, they can listen to us right now through it.
"It becomes daily life," he shrugs. "I don't care anymore. I just express myself freely, and I pay the price."
Part of that price is criticism from some Western diplomats in Cairo, who view him as a troublemaker for "proselytizing" Muslims and then campaigning to protect the converts from persecution. "Some people in the American and British embassies really get angry, complaining that they get too many faxes, calls and letters because of me," he says.
But Abdul Noor contends he is only obeying the Lord: "I have a standing order to be an evangelist. If this disturbs anyone, I am leaving it to Jesus to defend His cause. I have good news, so if I do not share it with people, I am really taking something wonderful away from them. I don't force anyone to believe."
Admittedly, his tall, spired church topped by a cross and positioned in central Cairo is an embarrassingly prominent Christian landmark for Muslim Egypt. Built 50 years ago at the edge of Tahrir Square, the Kasr el-Dobara Evangelical Church was soon afterwards blocked from public view by a massive government office building.
Now considered the largest functioning Protestant church in Egypt and all of the Middle East, the church has 850 active members and draws a weekly average of 4,000 Christians to its worship services, prayer meetings, Bible study classes and youth and children's meetings. Its cathedral-style sanctuary can seat only 1,500 comfortably, but ushers manage to squeeze 3,000 into frequent revival services by using closed circuit TV units in the courtyards and throughout the premises.
The overwhelming majority of the congregation are Copts, members of the largest Christian minority community in the Muslim world. But when Abdul Noor was called to its pulpit in 1976, he recalls that "there was already the beginning of a movement of the Holy Spirit to reach Muslims."
Since then, a growing number of Egyptian Muslims have begun to visit the church for its full calendar of activities. In reaction, secret police sit in every service, openly taping what is said from the pulpit. "Another captive audience," Abdul Noor grins.
But while his limestone church remains a focal point, Abdul Noor is probably better known across Egypt and the Arab world as the radio voice of A Word With You, a late-night broadcast over Trans World Radio that continued for 20 years, until 1996. Some 7,000 letters a month poured in responding to the show's 15-minute sermons.
For the last eight years Abdul Noor has also done regular television clips for Middle East Television and, more recently, SAT-7 distribution. In addition, he has authored more than 45 books, some of them best sellers on Cairo streets, and translated another 45 Christian titles from English into Arabic.
The Muslim world has taken notice. One Islamic radical in Cairo sought out Abdul Noor after listening to him by accident late one night on the radio and then finding one of his books for sale on the street.
"In both speaking and writing, his Arabic language was perfect, and so warm," recalls the man, then a university student. For nearly four years, he met privately with Abdul Noor, posing every difficult question he had about Christ and the Bible.
"He never gave me any answers," the man told Charisma. "But without ever attacking Islam, he opened my eyes. I was throwing rocks, and he answered with fire!"
Now married to another convert, this believer still has not revealed his Christian faith publicly, following his pastor's advice: Don't announce it until they discover it.
"It's not hiding your faith," Abdul Noor insists. "It's giving yourself two blessings: time to grow and deepen your faith in Christ and a chance to show the differences Jesus has made in your life. Then, when the time comes, share it graciously, and give all the credit to God."
A Target for Trouble
Abdul Noor had not yet learned that sensitivity when, as a young seminarian at New York's Biblical Seminary, he penned his chosen master's thesis: "How to Evangelize Muslims in Egypt." His paper set the direction of his ministry for the next 40 years--both as a Christian apologist, scholar and evangelist and as a student of Islamics.
It also blacklisted him once he returned home. For 12 years, from 1958 until 1970, Abdul Noor was refused a passport to leave Egypt, squelching his dreams of pursuing a doctorate abroad. So he threw himself into editing publications for his denomination for several years before taking his second pastorate at Zagazig in the Delta, part of the biblical land of Goshen.
Eventually his travel ban was lifted, and he began receiving invitations to lecture and teach abroad. But his name triggered an automatic security police check at the airport.
Every time he would leave and return to the country, he was subjected to thorough luggage and body searches, along with lengthy interrogations: Where did you speak? What did you say? Why are you teaching Christians about Islam?
He and his wife, Nadia, learned to take it in stride. "We just plan to arrive at the airport many hours in advance so we don't miss our plane," Nadia says.
"Actually, I like getting searched by the Egyptian police," Menes adds. "It introduces me to different officers. I greet them, talk with them, smile at them. And we Egyptians have such a sense of humor, so I tell them I like being a VIP, with my name on the computer, showing I'm a very special person."
One time he tapped his forehead and, grinning, told the security officer, "What you are searching for is here, not in my pockets!"
Menes knows the authorities are particularly uncomfortable about his teaching Islamics abroad. After he became a regular lecturer for the Haggai Institute's Singapore base, Egyptian authorities went so far as to ask the Singapore government to deny him a visitor's visa there. Then they called the Haggai staff and pried for details on the content and schedule of his "Christology in Middle Eastern Culture" classes.
"I was astonished," Menes says. "I am not that dangerous, I think!"
At one time, evidently, Egyptian President Anwar Sadat thought he was. Abdul Noor's name appeared on a government list of some 1,500 Egyptians--mostly Muslim extremists but including 160 Coptic Christians--to be arrested in a September 1981 crackdown for allegedly "threatening national unity and security."
Warned the evening before of his pending arrest, Abdul Noor went on with his normal activities. He conducted a wedding in his church, listened to his own late-night radio sermon and then went to bed, expecting to be arrested before dawn. He later learned that his name had been removed from the list by Sadat at 2 a.m. to "avoid problems with international Protestantism."
In 1991, the Egyptian police finally gave Abdul Noor an ultimatum. When he refused to stop ministering among Muslims, they told him to choose one of three punishments: be jailed, be banned from leaving the country or be exiled permanently.
But Abdul Noor would not take up the gauntlet. He told the police that he would trust God for the power to bear it if they imprisoned him and then assured them that either of the other two options would be no punishment at all.
"Not leaving Egypt would be a great favor to me because I'm writing books, and this will give me a chance to finish them. Besides, I have my daughter and her children here in Egypt," he explained.
"But if you deport me, I will be just as happy abroad, because I have a green card, and my son and his children live in America. This will be no punishment either."
The pastor never heard anything more from the security police about his three choices.
"Why am I still alive?" Abdul Noor asks. "It's the prayers of my friends all over the world. It's the civilized government of Egypt. It's the grace of God."
Making a Choice
For Abdul Noor, more difficult than the personal threats against him have been those made against his church members. In 1981, one of his church elders was jailed for five months on charges of evangelizing Muslims. "I kept quiet and said nothing," he admits.
But then in early January 1986, 10 Muslim converts to Christ were imprisoned for "scorning Islam."
"I kept quiet until mid-February," Abdul Noor recalls. "Then I thought: Why do I keep quiet? If I keep quiet, they will keep on jailing them! I'd better do something about it."
He knew nothing about human rights groups or political lobbying, but he did manage to get a letter about the arrests smuggled to a friend abroad. Soon international opinion exploded over the case, and the believers were eventually released. In a subsequent case in 1990, when three young Muslim men who had converted to Christianity were arrested, tortured and imprisoned for nine months, Abdul Noor made sure the world knew about their plight.
In recent years, however, the security authorities have changed their tactics--undoubtedly because of the increased number of converts, Abdul Noor says. While 20 years ago a pastor in Egypt might have had eight or 10 Muslims come to inquire privately about the Christian faith during a year's time, now as many as 100 approach them annually.
"Now, instead of arresting and torturing the Muslim converts, they put pressure on their families, who then have to put pressure on them," Menes says. "It's indirect, but just as bad--or maybe worse."
Abdul Noor acknowledges that he talks with many Muslims who believe the truth of the Christian gospel but do not convert. "Many are convinced, but they say that the price is too great to be paid," he explains.
"Marriage is a major issue in it all, because there's no way a young Egyptian couple can manage financially unless the parents help them." Yet parental support is typically cut off when a Muslim converts to Christianity. Furthermore, a Muslim wife is required by Egyptian law to divorce her husband if he becomes a Christian.
Converts also know their children are going to suffer, Abdul Noor adds. Earlier this year, one converted couple was warned by relatives to stop raising their children as Christians. If they refused, the husband's brother threatened, he would exercise his legal right under Shari'a (Islamic law) to take custody of the couple's 2-year-old daughter and baby son, since they were not being raised as "good Muslims."
"I feel like we're in the situation of the first church, as Paul wrote about in 1 Corinthians 7," Abdul Noor says. "These believers have to choose--and sometimes they can't choose the good, but simply differentiate between the least bad!"
According to one Egyptian convert who was jailed and tortured as a young believer, security officials openly blame Abdul Noor for the rise in Muslim conversions, citing his radio programs, books and direct apologetical style from the pulpit and in person.
"So he is in more danger than we are," the convert told Charisma. "But it's too late. There are many Meneses now, all over Egypt!" *
Barbara Bakeris a journalist based in Istanbul. She works for California-based Compass Direct news service, reporting on religious persecution in the Middle East.
FACING PAGE: Pastor Menes Abdul Noor prays during a Sunday service at Kasr el-Dobara Evangelical Church in Cairo, Egypt. INSET: Outside Abdul Noor's church, most Egyptians pray to Allah seven times a day.