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Is Islam taking over the United States? Naeem Fazal was raised a Sunni Muslim in Kuwait and came to faith in Jesus after arriving in America. Today he pastors in Charlotte, and he argues that many Christians asking the question cannot say which Muslims they mean. In this episode, he and Fares Abraham take on the “Islamic takeover” narrative, what Sharia actually means, and the diversity within Islam that rarely enters the conversation. They ask what that fear costs the church’s witness, and what it looks like to meet Muslim neighbors the way Jesus met the Samaritans.
Naeem Fazal is the founding pastor of Mosaic Church in Charlotte, North Carolina, which he planted in 2006 after serving on the pastoral staff of Seacoast Church. He is the author of Ex-Muslim and Tomorrow Needs You: Seeing Beauty When You Feel Hopeless, and a speaker coach for TEDx Charlotte.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links From This Conversation:
Alexis Bonilla joins the podcast from San Antonio to help Christians understand Palestinian identity, inherited eschatology, and the disunity dividing the American church. The conversation works through why her father told her to say he was from Israel, what changed when she traveled to Palestine for the first time at twenty, and what Matthew 25 asks of Christians who care about the Middle East but do not know what to do with that.
Alexis Bonilla is a Palestinian American minister credentialed with the Church of God and based in San Antonio, Texas, where she serves in next generation ministry alongside her husband, Eli Bonilla Jr. A graduate of Lee University and the daughter of a father from Beit Sahour, she speaks as someone who has had to reconcile her own family's story with the theology she was handed.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links:
4 Chair Discipling: What Jesus Calls Us to Do (Moody, 2019)
Dr. Martin Accad joins the podcast from Beirut to help Christians understand Lebanon, Islam, justice, and peace through the eyes of a Lebanese Christian theologian. The conversation works through what the West gets wrong about Islam, why justice sits at the center of the gospel, and how Christians can love their Muslim neighbors without compromising their faith.
Martin Accad is President of the Near East School of Theology in Beirut and a leading scholar of Islam and Christian-Muslim relations, with a doctorate from the University of Oxford and a faculty appointment at Fuller Theological Seminary. His work helps followers of Jesus reject fear, pursue justice without hatred, and bear witness to Christ in one of the most complex regions in the world.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links:
Sacred Misinterpretation: Reaching Across the Christian-Muslim Divide (Eerdmans, 2019)
Near East School of Theology (NEST)
Daniel Klein grew up in Efrat — an Israeli settlement a few miles from Bethlehem — inside a religious Zionist world that told him Palestinians didn't exist. This episode traces how that worldview collapsed: the structural violence of Israel's settlement enterprise, the erasure of the Nakba from Jewish consciousness, how Christian Zionism has functioned as financial and theological cover for the occupation, and what it cost Klein personally to leave it all behind — including his journey from rabbinic Judaism and the IDF to faith in Jesus Christ.
Daniel Klein is an Israeli-American, former IDF veteran, and West Bank settler-turned-Christian who now speaks publicly on the lived realities of Israeli settlement policy and the theological distortions of Christian Zionism.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Fares Abraham sits down with Edwin Keshish-Abnous — an Iranian-American Christian born in pre-revolution Tehran — for a conversation on the explosive growth of the church in Iran, how theology and geopolitics shape each other in dangerous ways, and what faithful Christian witness looks like when both their homelands are in active conflict. They discuss the cost of discipleship under an Islamic regime, the shift from 500 Muslim-background believers to the fastest-growing evangelical church in the world, and what happens when scripture is used to justify modern warfare — including the recent use of Psalm 18 at a Pentagon worship service to frame the Iran conflict as a holy war.
Edwin Keshish-Abnous is the Executive Director of Heart4Iran and Director of Programming at Mohabat TV, the first 24-hour Farsi Christian satellite channel. He is an adjunct professor at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary and the author of two theological works in Farsi on the Lord's Prayer and the Trinity.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links:
Heart4Iran
Mohabat TV
GAMAAN Survey: "Iranians' Attitudes Toward Religion" (2020)
Nabil Habiby joins The Fares Abraham Podcast to discuss the challenges facing Christians in Lebanon and across the Middle East, including war, migration, and the long-term future of the church in the region.
Nabil Habiby is a Lebanese theologian, youth pastor, and lecturer in New Testament. He serves as Dean of Students at the Nazarene School in Beirut, teaches at the Arab Nazarene Bible College, and is an adjunct lecturer at the Arab Baptist Theological Seminary. He is also a doctoral student at Nazarene Theological College in Manchester, where his research explores impurity and demonic spirits in the Hebrew Bible and Second Temple Judaism.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links:
“Reshaping the Ultimate Other: Levantine Conversion from Extremist Islam” (Academic Study Referenced in the Conversation)
Urbana25 hosted a panel on Palestine and Israel, giving students a space to talk about what their response to the conflict should look like today. It was a profound honor to stand on the stage, not alone, but alongside my brother Aaron Abramson from Jews for Jesus. In a world demanding we pick sides, we gathered to talk about a third way: the way of Jesus.My prayer is that this conversation helps you see Israelis and Palestinians not as extensions of a conflict, but as human beings made in God's image. As I shared on stage: God is not pro-Israel or pro-Palestine; God is pro-peace.
Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links:
Jews for Jesus | Urbana Conference
Dr. Anne Zaki joins The Fares Abraham Podcast to discuss the indigenous church of the Middle East and why Christianity’s place of origin matters for how the global Church understands Scripture today.
Anne Zaki is Professor of Preaching and Practical Theology at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Cairo and holds a PhD in preaching from Fuller Theological Seminary. She has served the Egyptian evangelical church for decades and returned to Egypt during the 2011 uprising to continue her teaching and ministry.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links:
Brian Heerwagen joins The Fares Abraham Podcast to discuss mission in the Middle East, gospel-centered partnership, and why mission is not reserved for a spiritual elite.Brian Heerwagen is CEO of MissionWorks and has spent decades equipping churches, leaders, and mission organizations for effective service. He has served in missions leadership since the 1980s and has helped shape training and standards for short-term mission through his work with MissionWorks and the Standards of Excellence network.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Helpful Links:
Pastor Edward Awabdeh joins The Fares Abraham Podcast to discuss the state of the church in Syria following the fall of the Assad regime in late 2024 and what it means to lead a congregation in Damascus through violence, fear, and instability.
Edward Awabdeh is pastor of the Alliance Church of Damascus and president of the Christian and Missionary Alliance churches in Syria and Lebanon. He comes from a multi-generational family of pastors and has served the church through decades of political upheaval, including the Syrian war and its ongoing aftermath.
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Welcome to the Fares Abraham Podcast. Explore untold faith stories from the Middle East and conversations that challenge the narratives you thought you knew. Hosted by Dr. Fares Abraham, this podcast offers a gospel-centered perspective on culture, theology, and current events in the Levant Region.
Stay Connected with Pastor Fares Abraham:
faresabraham.com | linktree/faresabraham
Follow Pastor Fares Abraham on Social Media:
Youtube | Instagram | Facebook | Tiktok | X | LinkedIn | Linktree
Learn more about the church in Syria and its context:
From the publisher's feed