Journalist Says His Was a Personal Journey, not a Political Act
BY EDWARD PENTIN
REGISTER CORRESPONDENT
April 6-12, 2008 Issue |
Posted 4/1/08 at 9:57 AM
ROME — Pope Benedict XVI had a surprise guest at the Easter
Vigil: A prominent Italian Muslim who had spent a year preparing to enter the
Catholic Church.
Magdi Allam, 56, was baptized March 22 in the globally
televised Easter Vigil at St. Peter’s Basilica.
In the tense dialogue between Christians and Muslims, his
personal statement of faith was misinterpreted by some as a provocative
political maneuver.
But Allam told the Register that he, not the co-religionists
he left behind, knows best why he converted to the Catholic faith.
Allam was born in Cairo and attended Catholic schools. He
says he remembers being interested in the Catholic faith as early in his life
as age 4. Though they didn’t try to convert him, he said, the formation by the
Salesians and Comboni sisters helped him “become aware of the reality of
religion, it allowed me to share in the lives of Catholic religious and lay
figures, to read the Bible and the Gospels, to attend Mass.”
He moved to Italy in 1972 at age 20 and has lived there
since. In recent years, he said, “two experiences accelerated my path” to
conversion.
“The first was five years ago when I found myself escorted
under armed guard because of threats from extremists and Islamic terrorists,”
said Allam. “This situation forced me to reflect not only on the reality of
Islamic extremism, but also Islam as a religion.”
The second experience was the opportunity to encounter
ordinary Catholics — and one extraordinary one, Pope Benedict XVI himself.
“I am proud to have been one of the few Muslims in Italy
working for a national newspaper who stood firm in defending the Pope after his
discourse in Regensburg on Sept. 12, 2006,” said Allam. “I didn’t only defend
him in the name of freedom of expression, I also defended the content of what
he said, believing that it corresponded to the truth on a historical and
scientific level.”
The Holy Father’s speech stressed the importance of reason
and opposed violence in religion. He said his plans to be baptized by the Pope
coalesced about a year ago when he began a preparation course with Bishop Rino
Fisichella, rector of Rome’s Pontifical Lateran University.
Aref Ali Nayed is a spokesman for the 138 Muslim scholars
who initiated the Common Word dialogue project in October and who established
the Catholic-Muslim Forum for dialogue with the Vatican in early March.
Nayed questioned Pope Benedict XVI’s decision to baptize
Allam in such a public way.
“It is sad that the intimate and personal act of a religious
conversion is made into a triumphalist tool for scoring points,” Nayed said.
“It is sad that the particular person chosen for such a highly public gesture
has a history of generating, and continues to generate, hateful discourse.”
Allam says that this is far from the truth.
“I wasn’t sought out,” he said, “that wouldn’t have been
possible. No, and I never thought for a moment when I decided to become a
Catholic that such a positive thing could happen. “
To Allam, the controversy about his conversion reveals a
deadly double standard.
“I am really baffled that they consider the baptism of a
Muslim to Christianity a provocation, and that the image of the Pope baptizing
a Muslim should make this fact even more serious,” he said. “It’s as if some
think the baptism of a Muslim is something shameful, so much so that they’d
have preferred it if I was baptized in a distant parish, away from the people,
because it’s better that people don’t know about it. I am proud to be a convert
to Catholicism and to have publicly affirmed it in a solemn way.”
He said in Europe, there are thousands who have converted to
Islam and “no one says anything. No one is allowed to criticize them, or
threaten them, but if just one Muslim converts to Christianity, immediately he
is sentenced to death for apostasy. That’s happening now in Europe — not in
Saudi Arabia. If we in Europe are not at the stage of defending religious
liberty, including the right of a Muslim to convert to the Christian religion
or any other faith, then I’d say we have lost our battle for civilization and
liberty.”
Moderate Islam
Allam is in a unique position to see the Muslim-Christian
conflict. On the one hand, he was until recently known as a voice within Islam
calling for moderation. On the other, he now must take security precautions
because he feels threatened by Muslims angry at him for converting.
“I am convinced there are moderate Muslims, that there are
Muslims who share rules that allow for coexistence,” he said. “People are not
automatic products of the dogmas of their faith; they’re not like fruits of a
tree. In reality, people are more complex. Each person is different, has his
own particular relationship with his religion that can be more or less
intense.”
“We have to distinguish between persons and religions” he
said.
“Islam is a religion that has always been plural because
it’s had within it a myriad of souls. But as a religion it’s never been
pluralistic, it’s not been democratic.”
He said “war is internal to Islam. … It’s enough to think
that three of the four successors of Muhammad were assassinated by Muslims
because they were contrary to the way they considered Islam, their way of
exercising power.”
But is Islam doomed to repeat that future? Can it change?
“I don’t want to put limits on Providence, but as a Muslim
of 56 years, I couldn’t be sure of the possibility of internal reform in Islam,
that it could fully render itself compatible with the values and principles
that I consider inalienable and inviolable.”
The best hope, he said, is for coexistence.
Allam must now deal with one consequence of his action:
Anger by people who share his concerns about Islamic extremism but nonetheless
fear that by being baptized in the way he was, he will provoke attacks on
Christians.
But Allam said that this attitude is based in part on a
misunderstanding.
“We should free ourselves from the common assumption that
the violence of extremism and Islamic terrorism is reactive, that is to say,
it’s due to provocation and is incited,” he said.
He cited the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 to characterize
Islamic terrorism as “aggressive” rather than defensive. Osama Bin Laden acted
without provocation.
“It was an act of war, an act of aggression against the
United States,” he said. “Today, Christians in the Middle East, Muslim
countries, in Iraq, are being slaughtered. They’re being persecuted in Egypt,
Algeria, Sudan and Lebanon. All of these things haven’t happened because they
were provoked by the Pope. They kill them because they consider the use of
violence to be legitimate against all those who do not resemble them.”
Rather than reacting to events, terrorists strike where they
will and make up reasons as they wish, he said.
“They manipulate events to say: ‘It’s the fault of the Pope,
it’s the fault of Magdi Allam,’ and because of that, we can behave in a certain
way. But they’re already doing it: Since 1945, around 10 million Christians
abandoned the Middle East. In the countries on the southern shores of the
eastern Mediterranean, there were 1 million Jews; today there are about 1,000.
All this happened because of the reality of intolerance and violence towards
those who are not Muslim.”
Osama Bin Laden released a threatening message that mentioned
the Pope a few days before Easter. Will the coincidence make his conversion
look like part of a crusade?
Allam refused to even consider the question.
“Bin Laden is the ideological head of a globalized Islamic
terrorist network,” he said. “We are talking about a criminal, the most hunted
man on earth, who has massacred thousands of people, a man who legitimized the
indiscriminate killing of all people who do not submit to his power. We cannot
in any way legitimize such a person and consider him in negotiations. The Pope
hasn’t launched a crusade.”
To Allam, the baptism says something quite different about
Pope Benedict.
“He has put faith and reason before other diplomatic and
political considerations,” said Allam. “I believe the Pope in this circumstance
has shown himself to be a great Pope because he has set himself above the
fray.”
Edward Pentin writes
from Rome.
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