Magdi Cristiano Allam Is leaving the Catholic Church
Reason: The Church is too weak vis-à-vis Islam.

The high-profile Egyptian ex-Muslim convert to Islam, Magdi Cristiano Allam, is leaving the Roman Catholic Church because of what he sees as an inherent weakness in the Church to confront the excesses of Islam and the Church's legitimisation of Islam as a true religion of God, Muhammad as one of His true prophets, the Koran as a sacred text, and mosques as legitimate places of worship. Magdi Allam is convinced that the ideology of Islam is inherently violent, conflicted within and warlike with the outside world. Moreover, Mr. Allam is convinced that Europe will eventually submit to Islam if Europeans do not have the vision and summon up the courage to stand up to it. Islam, he says, is incompatible both with Western civilization and human rights. He says he will continue to believe in Jesus, whom he has always loved and proudly identified with. Christianity, he says, more than any other religion brings man closer to God, who chose to become man. [Source: Corriere della Sera] | Tuesday, March 26, 2013


WIKI: Magdi Cristiano Allam »

Converted Muslim Tells Story behind Papal Baptism
ZENIT.ORG: Italian Journalist Recounts Journey to Catholicism

ROME - The high-profile baptism of Magdi Cristiano Allam at the Easter Vigil ceremony presided over last year by Benedict XVI has a story behind it. According to Allam himself, his conversion journey was possible because of great Christian witnesses.



One of the directors of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, he spoke about his conversion and the experiences that led to it when he met with university students of Rome last week to tell the story of his path to Catholicism.



Starting from the Easter Vigil of 2008 -- which Allam called the "most beautiful day of my life" -- when he received baptism from Benedict XVI in St. Peter's Basilica, the Italian-Egyptian journalist spoke of his life journey and the reflections that brought him to embrace "a new life in Christ and a new spiritual itinerary."



"This journey," he recalled, "began apparently by chance, [but] in truth was providential. Since age four, I had the chance to attend Italian Catholic schools in Egypt. I was first a student of the Comboni religious missionaries, and later, starting with fifth grade, of the Salesians.



"I thus received an education that transmitted to me healthy values and I appreciated the beauty, truth, goodness and rationality of the Christian faith," in which "the person is not a means, but a starting point and an arriving point."



"Thanks to Christianity," he said, "I understood that truth is the other side of liberty: They are an indissoluble binomial. The phrase, 'The truth will make you free' is a principle that you young people should always keep in mind, especially today when, scorning the truth, freedom is relinquished."



The journalist continued: "My conversion was possible thanks to the presence of great witnesses of faith, first of all, His Holiness Benedict XVI. One who is not convinced of his own faith -- often it's because he has not found in it believable witnesses of this great gift.



"The second indissoluble binomial in Christianity is without a doubt that of faith and reason. This second element is capable of giving substance to our humanity, the sacredness of life, respect for human dignity and the freedom of religious choice."



The journalist affirmed that the Holy Father's 2006 speech in Regensburg -- which caused uproar within the Muslim community -- was for him a reason to reflect.



Allam said: "An event, before my conversion, made me think more than other events: the Pope's discourse in Regensburg. On that occasion, citing the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Paleologus, he affirmed something that the Muslims themselves have never denied: that Islam spreads the faith above all with the sword." >>> By Luca Marcolivio | December 1, 2008

ZENIT.ORG:
Cristiano Magdi Allam revient sur sa conversion >>> | 3.12.2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy)

Muslim Convert [to Christianity] Turns to Politics in Italy
ASSOCIATED PRESS: ROME — An Egyptian-born writer who renounced Islam and was baptized by Pope Benedict XVI said Sunday that he has formed a political party that would enter candidates in next year's EU elections.

Magdi Cristiano Allam said his "Protagonists for Christian Europe" party would work to defend Europe's Christian values, which he sees threatened by secularism and moral relativism. He said his new party would be open to people of all faiths and would be close to the conservative European People's Party.

Allam built his career in Italy as commentator and book author attacking Islamic extremism and supporting Israel.

In March, Allam angered some in the Muslim world with a high-profile conversion during an Easter vigil service led by the pope in St. Peter's Basilica.

Allam, who took the name Cristiano upon converting, has credited Benedict with being instrumental in his decision to become a Catholic and has said the pope had baptized him to support freedom of religion. >>> | November 30, 2008

TIMESONLINE: Political Party Founded to Defend Christian Europe

A newly converted Christian has set up a political party to defend Christianity against secularism and moral relativism

An Egyptian-born writer who was baptised by Pope Benedict XVI last Easter after converting to Christianity from Islam has announced that he has founded a political party to "defend Christian Europe" which would field candidates in next June's European elections.

Magdi Cristiano Allam, 56, said the party, "Protagonists for a Christian Europe", would work to defend Europe's Christian values, which were threatened by secularism and moral relativism to the point where Europe risked "committing suicide". The party would be open to people of all faiths.

Mr Allam, an associate editor of the newspaper Corriere della Sera, was speaking at the Foreign Press Club in Rome, accompanied by a police escort. An outspoken critic of Muslim extremism and a supporter of Israel, Mr Allam is under armed guard because of death threats. >>> Richard Owen in Rome | December 1, 2008

…"root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual." – Magdi Cristiano Allam
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy)

Muslim Convert to Catholicism Tells Pope Islam Is Not Inherently Good
CATHOLIC NEWS SERVICE : VATICAN CITY -- The Muslim-born journalist baptized by Pope Benedict XVI at Easter asked the pope to tell his top aide for relations with Muslims that Islam is not an intrinsically good religion and that Islamic terrorism is not the result of a minority gone astray.

As the Vatican was preparing to host the first meeting of the Catholic-Muslim Forum Nov. 4-6, Magdi Allam, a longtime critic of the Muslim faith of his parents, issued an open letter to Pope Benedict that included criticism of Cardinal Jean-Louis Tauran, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.

In the letter, posted on his Web site Oct. 20, Allam said he wanted to tell the pope of his concern for "the serious religious and ethical straying that has infiltrated and spread within the heart of the church."

He told the pope that it "is vital for the common good of the Catholic Church, the general interest of Christianity and of Western civilization itself" that the pope make a pronouncement in "a clear and binding way" on the question of whether Islam is a valid religion.

The Catholic Church's dialogue with Islam is based on the Second Vatican Council's Declaration on the Relationship of the Church to Non-Christian Religions ("Nostra Aetate"), which urged esteem for Muslims because "they adore the one God," strive to follow his will, recognize Jesus as a prophet, honor his mother, Mary, "value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting."

The council called on Catholics and Muslims "to work sincerely for mutual understanding" and for social justice, moral values, peace and freedom.

Allam told Pope Benedict he specifically objected to Cardinal Tauran telling a conference in August that Islam itself promotes peace but that "'some believers' have 'betrayed their faith,'" using it as a pretext for violence.

"The objective reality, I tell you with all sincerity and animated by a constructive intent, is exactly the opposite of what Cardinal Tauran imagines," Allam told the pope. "Islamic extremism and terrorism are the mature fruit" of following "the sayings of the Quran and the thought and action of Mohammed." >>> By Cindy Wooden | October 29, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback & Hardback) – Free delivery >>>

Pope Benedict Baptizes Many Muslims and Magdi Alam
Part 1:


Part 2:


The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy)

Intervista a Magdi Cristiano Allam

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy)

Magdi Allam Reacts to Death Threats
AKI – Rome: Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and journalist Magdi Allam have received death threats posted in an Islamist website said to be close to al-Qaeda.

Magdi Allam, the Christian convert targeted by Islamist death threats, has expressed concern about the danger he faces and fears that the perpetrators may be Italian.

"I find it extremely worrying that today we can find internet sites, full of al-Qaeda-inspired thought in Italian language, giving support to Bin Laden's terrorism," said Allam in an interview with Adnkronos International (AKI) on Wednesday.

Allam is an Egyptian-born writer and deputy editor of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, who converted from Islam to Roman Catholicism in a highly publicised Easter service conducted by Pope Benedict XVI at the Vatican in April.

"I find this serious because the writers of these sites are most likely Italians," Allam told AKI. Italy: Christian Convert Reacts to Islamist Death Threats >>> | June 18, 2008

CNA:
Magdi Allam Says Islamist Death Threats Suggest ‘Extremely Worrying’ Italian Origin >>> | June 19, 2008

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Terrorism: Italian PM and Christian Convert Targets of Islamist Death Threats

AKI: Dubai, 17 June - Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi and a prominent Italian journalist who recently converted to Christianity, are the targets of new death threats posted on one of the most popular Islamist websites said to be close to al-Qaeda, on Tuesday.

The threats are aimed at Berlusconi and Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born newspaper editor who converted from Islam to Roman Catholicism during the Vatican's Easter vigil in April 2008.

A writer and deputy editor of Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, Allam was named the winner of the prestigious Oriana Fallaci journalism award on Monday night for writing about immigration, Muslim integration and terrorism.

Previous threats to the Italian premier were made in Arabic but Tuesday's internet message was for the first time posted completely in Italian with the title, 'Berlusconi and Magdi Allam'. Terrorism: Italian PM and Christian Convert Targets of Islamist Death Threats >>> By Hamza Boccolini | June 17, 2008

Hat tip: Jihad Watch

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Islam Is “Intrinsically Violent”, Warns Muslim Convert, Magdi Cristiano Allam
Photo of the recently converted Muslim to Roman Catholicism, Magdi Cristiano Allam, courtesy of Catholic News Agency
CATHOLIC NEWS AGENCY: Rome - Italian journalist and Muslim convert to Catholicism, Magdi Allam, warned this week that Islam is growing as a result of the ideology of relativism that pervades the West and claims that there are many truths instead of one unique Truth.

In an article published by the magazine Mundo Cristiano and quoted by Analisis Digital, Allam explained that relativism, which attributes “equal dignity to everything regardless of the content” has made it possible for extremism and Islamic terrorism “to be introduced and to take root” in Europe, to the point that there are Islamic extremists with European citizenship who “act upon and spread an ideology of hatred and violence.”

Likewise, Allam, who was recently baptized by Benedict XVI, said it was impossible to be a moderate Muslim, because the religion of Islam is “physiologically violent, as confirmed by certain verses from the Koran that defend an ideology of hatred, violence, death and condemnation of those who are not Muslims. This way of thinking comes from Mohammed,” Allam said, adding that Islam is an “intrinsically violent” religion.

Asked about his conversion to the faith, Allam said he was convinced by the preaching and testimony of Benedict XVI, whose “strong affirmation of the relationship between faith and reason as a foundation for understanding the authenticity of true religion” fascinated him. [Source: Islam’s Growth Result of Western Relativism, Warns Muslim Convert] May 28, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age – Dust Jacket Hardcover, direct from the publishers
The Dawning of a New Dark Age –Paperback, direct from the publishers

Magdi Cristiano Allam

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy)

A Lifetime to Become a Christian
CORRIERE DELLA SERA INTERNATIONAL: It was the best day of my life. Receiving the gift of the Christian faith on the day of Christ’s Resurrection from the hand of the Holy Father is a matchless privilege and inestimable blessing. For me, at the age of almost 56, it was a unique, unforgettable historic event that signalled a radical, definitive change with respect to the past. During the night of 22 March 2008, on the occasion of the Easter Vigil, at the solemn liturgy celebrated in the magnificence of the Basilica of St Peter’s, the cradle of Catholicism, I was reborn in Christ. At the end of a long, protracted struggle, lived out as a Muslim by reason of the legacy inherited from my parents and with a personal history of lacerating doubts and torments, there ignited within me, by divine will and responsible choice, the light of the true Christian faith. My spiritual metamorphosis unfolded from nine o’clock over three hours that seemed as if they would never end. I passed those hours in uncontrollable excitement, outwardly betrayed by my tingling nerves, over the radical nature of the life experience that was taking place inside me and, I admit, in part because of the cold that gripped me and stayed with me from the beginning of the imposing ceremony in the atrium of the Basilica, accompanied by rain and icy temperatures.

Inside the Basilica, the lights had been extinguished. I was outside with six other adult catachumens waiting to receive the sacraments of Christian initiation, seated on the part of the parvis most exposed to the wind. It was in that damp cold, which usually makes me a little agitated and means I have to concentrate more to listen, reflect, assess and elaborate concepts, that I began to relive the film of my inner life. Half a century was reviewed frame by frame and sliced up with the now uncompromising, now compassionate scalpel of religion, calm enough for one last unconscious confirmation of a decision already taken consciously yet at the same time with sufficient urgency to recompose the overall framework of my existence into a harmonious whole, joyfully to register the image of the long-awaited, soon to be accomplished, Event, as I reinterpreted my past while redefining and revolutionising my future. (...) From the atrium, Benedict XVI led the procession towards the altar after the deacon, chanting the Lumen Christi for the third time, had brought the splendour of light back to the Basilica.

Then began the crucial stage of my conversion to Christianity, to which evidently I was called by the grace of God that had accompanied me from my youngest days, bringing into my path a series of “coincidences” that were anything but fortuitous, concealing as they did the will of the Lord that discreetly comes to meet us without making its presence palpable. As I slowly walked down the nave at the rear of the procession, my mind at once went back to the key event that started me on the route of interior spirituality at the age of four, and would more than half a century later culminate in my conversion to Christ. It was September 1956. I still have clear in my mind the day on which my long travails began. I had burst into tears as my mother Safeya, aided and persuaded by the Caccias, the family of wealthy Italian textile magnates resident for generations in my native Cairo, handed me over to Sister Lavinia. She hid me under her habit so I would not see my mother entrusting me to the education and affection of the Combonian sisters and their devotion to St Joseph. Later on, from the last year of primary school to the last year of my scientific secondary school, I studied at the Salesian Don Bosco Institute. A Lifetime to Become a Christian: Journalist’s autobiographical book describes key moments that marked his passage to new faith >>> By Magdi Cristiano Allam (Translated by Giles Watson) | May 6, 2008

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback – Italy)

Sheikh Qaradawi: A “Provocative and Hostile Act Against Muslims”
GULF TIMES: PROMINENT scholar Sheikh Yousuf al-Qaradawi has denounced Pope Benedict’s baptism of a Muslim-born journalist during the last Easter Mass at the Vatican as a “provocative and hostile act against Muslims”. 


Sheikh Qaradawi, who is the head of the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS) and the European Council for Fatwa and Research, said the public baptism of Majdi Allam has provoked Muslims around the world.


“We do not feel regret over the conversion of that person. He has been a Catholic for more than five years. He was always attacking Islam, the Qur’an and me. The problem is that he was baptised by the Pope in public and in front of satellite TV cameras. This is a hostile act against Islam,” he told Doha-based Al Jazeera television.


“It is not strange that Allam, who betrayed his country and supported Israel, left his religion. We know that he is an agent of Israel. He would not contribute to Islam if he were a Muslim,” he said.


Qaradawi said the public baptism has worsened relations between the Vatican and IUMS. “We were looking for a different approach from the Pope after his anti-Islam remarks two years ago. But the Pope’s baptism of a person who was known for his enmity to Islam and the Qur’an made us stick to our previous decision to suspend the IUMS relationship with the Vatican,” he told Al Jazeera.


The scholar also blamed the West for worsening relations with Islam. “We try to seek peace with the Vatican and the World Council of Churches but in vain. They keep provoking us by their hostility.”


Egyptian-born Allam, 55, is married to a Catholic and has infuriated Muslims with his books and columns in the leading Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, where he is a deputy editor. The title of one of his books is Long Live Israel. [Source: Qaradawi Flays Pope’s ‘Hostile Act’] | April 12, 2008

Hat tip: Jihad Watch

The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Paperback - UK)
The Dawning of a New Dark Age (Hardback - UK)

A Contested Conversion: Magdi Allam
ASIA NEWS: The Catholic baptism of the well known journalist, Magdi Allam, Egyptian and non practising Muslim, has been criticised and despised by the Islamic world. Added to this, is the embarrassment in Christian quarters, of those fearful of seeing a new crusade being launched by Benedict XVI and the Church. Instead, just as with the Regensburg address, this baptism is a message in defence of religious freedom, of evangelisation and of co-existence between religions.

Beirut (AsiaNews) – Every year, during the Easter Vigil in St Peter’s basilica, the pope baptises a group of adults drawn from the various continents. On the feast of the baptism of Jesus, meanwhile, the pope traditionally baptises small children.

This year’s vigil saw 7 people baptised. One of them was a Muslim, well known in Italy and abroad: Magdi Allam, deputy editor ad personam of the leading Italian daily newspaper Corriere della Sera. Magdi Christian [sic] Allam, a Contested Conversion >>> By Samir Khalil Samir

Mark Alexander