For the internet, it was merely another viral video showing a clash of cultures as a street evangelist confronted a group of Muslims praying outdoors.

But for Christopher Svochak, it's all part of a divine calling — exposing what he calls the "darkness" of Islam and calling sinners to repentance through Jesus Christ.

Svochak, a Texas native and director of the nonprofit Kingdom Reconcilers, has built a reputation on social media for bold, often provocative street evangelism. 

His latest act, a viral confrontation with a group of Muslim teens praying outside a Yemeni coffee shop near Dallas, drew swift condemnation from a controversial Islamic scholar and calls for a hate crime investigation.

The incident unfolded on a sidewalk outside Original Mocha Coffee in Murphy, just down the street from the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), a mosque that has itself been at the center of controversy. The teens, later identified as members of the Muslim Student Association at East Plano High School, had gathered outside Original Mocha Coffee for a brief sunset prayer organized by one of the shop's Muslim owners. 

Video footage, shared widely on social media, captured the group bowing their heads and kneeling just outside the coffee shop. 

Enter Svochak, who approached uninvited, stretching out his arm over the group.

"Duck, duck, goose. I’m mocking your religion because you’re bowing toward a stupid pedophile’s grave," Svochak said in the explosive clip, circling the group as they largely ignored him. "You need Jesus," he declared.

He then launched into a modified Lord's Prayer: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name, thy Kingdom come, thy will be done, on Earth as it is in Heaven. Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our sins as we forgive those who sin against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from Islam. For thine is the kingdom, the power, and the glory, forever and ever. Amen.”

The video exploded online, amassing thousands of views and shares. Yasir Qadhi, a resident scholar at EPIC and a key figure in the now-shelved EPIC City project — a proposed Muslim-only community outside Dallas that faced a federal civil rights probe earlier this year — decried it as “deplorable to see high school students harassed while praying in public, treated like a spectacle as others laugh and record.” 

CAIR-Texas, the state's chapter of the nation's largest Muslim civil rights organization, swiftly condemned the confrontation as "religious intimidation" and a "possible assault and hate crime." 

Svochak, who offered no apologies, said he decided to film the confrontation in response to reports of rising Islamist violence against Christians. “I decided to make the video because Islamists are currently killing Christians in Nigeria, Sudan and other parts of the world continually, where they have numerical advantages, and most Muslim-majority countries oppress Christians' rights at a minimum and persecute to the point of fighting and death in others.”

Pointing to the Apostle Paul’s call in Ephesians 5:11 for Christians to expose darkness, Svochak said his method of street preaching is a “form of giving the message of repentance as a Christian as Jesus commanded us to tell sinners to obey Him in the great adventure of evangelism throughout the world.”

Svochak said his decision to tweak the Lord's Prayer with "deliver us from Islam" stemmed from a desire to highlight what he sees as the faith's inherent evils. “The Lord Jesus instructed us to pray 'like this when we pray' when He delivered the message of the Lord's Prayer. I was simply applying the word ‘evil’ to the current situation so those who were listening could understand the evils of Islam, either by listening to me or researching for themselves.”

Despite the potential for conflict, Svochak said the praying teens reacted peacefully. “Some videotaped me with phones, and others followed us a little after their prayer was done back to our cars,” he said. “But this specific outreach was completely peaceful on both sides during the outreach.” 

As for CAIR's push for prosecution — claiming his outstretched arm constituted a form of "assault" — Svochak dismissed it outright. “The fact CAIR is a designated terror organization [in the UAE but not in the U.S.] speaks for itself. … The great adventure of Christianity is to tell everyone about Jesus and His words. The great adventure of the Quran is to fight the unbelievers in many different ways. CAIR chooses to oppress Christians by attempting to silence free speech and prosecute for doing that as well.”

In response to the video, Original Mocha Coffee responded on social media and confirmed that a “Yemeni American of [its] ownership team” participated in the “short prayer.” The statement condemned Svochak’s actions as “hate, plain and simple.”

Svochak said while he had no prior connection to Original Mocha, he was previously aware of the EPIC mosque down the road and saw the public prayer as idolatry, not religion. “These individuals at the Original Mocha were praying seemingly towards a brick wall facing East towards another four-sided wall in Mecca. I don't see this as religious and neither should Christians. We should see this as idolatry,” Svochak said, adding that he compared the scene to when the prophet Elijah mocked the false prophets of Baal in 1 Kings 18.

“The reason why hate and murder happens in the name of the god of the Quran is because of the same power of the prophets of Baal," he added. [...] “Jesus Christ is the power of God and is alive.”

News Source : https://www.christianpost.com/news/street-evangelist-says-viral-encounter-with-muslims-was-peaceful.html