Greek Orthodox Bishop Calls on Erdogan to Denounce Islam and Be Baptised

NEO KOSMOS: The proposal comes with the added suggestion that Russian President Vladimir Putin be his godfather

Greek Orthodox Bishop, Metropolit Seraphim of Piraeus has caused controversy by urging Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to convert to Orthodoxy with Russian President Vladimir Putin as his godfather. And no, it's not a joke.

In a 37-page letter to Erdogan written in Greek, Metropolit Seraphim asks the Turkish leader to denounce his Islamic faith and be baptised in the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople.

"If you want to save yourself and your family you should convert to Greek Orthodox Church, the only real faith," Seraphim writes, reports Keep Talking Greece.

"We propose and we advise you to come to the arms of the Greek Orthodox Church before the end of your life on earth. » | Thursday, April 13, 2017

Letter of His Eminence Metropolitan of Piraeus Mr. Seraphim to the President of the Turkish Republic Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdogan (In Greek) »

Reinstated, the Foster Parent Struck Off for Allowing Muslim Girl to Convert to Christianity
MAIL ONLINE: A foster parent struck off after a Muslim girl in her care converted to Christianity has won the right to be reinstated.

Gateshead Council’s decision to remove the carer from the register provoked a storm of controversy after it was highlighted by The Mail on Sunday last year.

The carer, who had looked after children for ten years and had a perfect record, was blamed for failing to ‘protect and preserve’ the girl’s Muslim faith when she was baptised, even though she was over 16 and had made up her own mind to change her religion.

Gateshead’s decision was quashed by a court in Leeds last week, prompting criticism of the former head of its children’s services, Maggie Atkinson, who is now Children’s Commissioner for England.

The foster carer, who cannot be named to preserve the anonymity of the girl, said last night that her loss of income had been ‘devastating’.

She added: ‘In addition to losing the Muslim teenager, another girl I was looking after was taken back into care. And I lost the farmhouse I rented to look after vulnerable teenagers.’

She said she was seeking damages from the council. >>> Jonathan Petre | Saturday, July 10, 2010

Son of Hamas Leader: Hamas Atrocities Led Me to Convert

Los Angeles Episcopal Bishop Offers Apology to Hindus over Conversion Attempts
VIRTUE ONLINE: The ultra liberal Episcopal Bishop of Los Angeles J. Jon Bruno offered a formal apology to Hindus for centuries-old acts of religious discrimination including attempts by Christians to convert them.



He then authorized a joint Hindu-Anglican service at St John's Cathedral in Los Angeles permitting Hindu devotees to receive the consecrated elements.



According to a statement read on his behalf by suffragan Bishop Chester Talton, he vowed not to proselytize non-Christians. "I believe that the world cannot afford for us to repeat the errors of our past, in which we sought to dominate rather than to serve, in this spirit, and in order to take another step in building trust between our two great religious traditions, I offer a sincere apology to the Hindu religious community," said the bishop's statement reported by the Los Angeles Times.



A Hare Krishna provided music along with the St John's cathedral choirs. When the Eucharist was celebrated Hindus were invited to receive the consecrated elements. Some Hindus who abstain from alcohol received only the host, the Los Angeles Times reported.



An icon was venerated at the Communion service. While a Hindu band sang a hymn the Anglican celebrant anointed the icon with sandalwood paste, draped a garland of flowers over the icon and lit a lamp, "as a sign of Christ, the light in the darkness." >>> David W. Virtue | Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Fathima Rifqa Bary


Runaway Cites Fear of Father over Leaving Islam
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH: Police doubt city man a threat to teenage Christian convert

A Northeast Side 17-year-old who ran away, saying that her father would kill her for leaving Islam, is in state custody in Florida.

But Sgt. Jerry Cupp of the missing-persons unit of the Columbus police special-victims bureau, disputes Fathima Rifqa Bary's allegation. He said her father, Mohamed Bary, appears to be a loving parent who knew about her conversion to Christianity months ago.

The New Albany High School cheerleader, who goes by Rifqa, disappeared on July 19, prompting fears that she had been abducted, Cupp said.

Authorities soon found that she was staying with a married couple who pastor a church in Orlando.

"She was petrified that her dad would kill her," said the Rev. Beverly Lorenz, who leads Global Revolution Church in Orlando along with her husband, the Rev. Blake Lorenz.

Mrs. Lorenz met the girl through a Facebook prayer group. Lorenz barely knew the girl, she said, but took her in when she called from a borrowed cell phone in Florida. >>> Meredith Heagney | Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Read the story at Pamela Geller’s website, Atlas Shrugs >>> | Wednesday, August 12, 2009

Hat tip: Robert Spencer

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)

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)

When Muslims Become Christians
Image courtesy of Google Images
BBC: There's a widespread belief that the penalty for leaving Islam is death - hence, perhaps, the killing of a British teacher last week. But Shiraz Maher believes attitudes may be softening.

Ziya Meral's parents disowned him when he converted from Islam to Christianity.

"They said 'go away, you're not our son.' They told people I died in an accident rather than having the shame of their son leaving Islam."

Born and raised in Turkey, he decided to convert to Christianity after moving to university. He knew telling his parents would be a difficult moment even though they're not particularly observant Muslims, and he planned to break the news to them gently.

In the end, events overtook him. Before heading back to Turkey for the holidays, Ziya briefly visited a Christian summer camp where he was filmed eating a bowl of spaghetti.

The first his parents heard of his conversion was when they saw Ziya on the national news being described as "an evil missionary" intent on "brainwashing" Turkish children.

His parents decided they would rather tell people that he was dead than acknowledge he was a Christian. And Ziya, who now lives in the UK, is not alone in this experience.

Sophia, which is not her real name, faced similar pressures when she decided to become a Christian.

Coming from a Pakistani background but living in east London, 28-year-old Sophia spoke about the extreme cultural pressures her family put her under.

"They kept saying: 'The punishment is death, do you know the punishment is death?'"

In the end, Sophia ran away from home. Her mother tracked her down and turned up at her baptism.

"I got up to get baptised, that's when my mother got up, ran to the front and tried to pull me out of the water.

"My brother was really angry. He reacted and phoned me on my mobile and just said: 'I'm coming down to burn that church.'"

For Sophia and Ziya, a lot of the prejudice they faced seemed to be borne out of cultural ideas, which are particularly ingrained in the South Asian community relating to notions of family honour.

But it's too easy to say this is just a cultural problem. Dig a little deeper and you find that there is a theological argument which advocates the death penalty for apostates, which has serious implications for British society. When Muslims Become Christians >>>

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

Muslim Converts to Christianity in the UK under Threat of Death for Apostasy
With thanks to AlwaysOnWatch for drawing my attention to this documentary. This video is a ‘must watch’:

Watch the video ‘Unholy War’
Mark Alexander

Gaza Terrorists Claim UN Converting Muslims to Christianity
YNET NEWS: Gaza terrorists claim UN 'converting our Muslims under the cover of an international organization'

A deadly attack Monday against a United Nations school in the Gaza Strip was carried by an Islamist extremist group, according to a statement faxed to WND which claimed the UN was targeted because the international body was "spreading Christian missionary activity."

"The UN is spreading Christian missionary. We will keep hitting them and trying to kill them. They are trying to convert our Muslims under the cover of an international organization," said the statement, signed by the group Jihadia Salafiya. UN attacked for spreading Christianity (more)

Mark Alexander

The story of the conversion of the Avenging Apostate
This moving story is in SIX parts, so be sure to read them all. To read the next part, click on the link at the bottom of each piece.

"The following post is my testimony on how I converted out of the death-cult of Islam into Christianity. It was a very long journey which I undertook just to find the truth and I am happy that finally I did. I wanted to share this testimony publicly because I want people to know what Islam’s true colors are and to show what it's like being born in a Moslem family in Saudi Arabia. I feel I have a duty to do so too. I want to show how the horrors of Islam change people’s lives, break relationships and destroy homes—these are the experiences that might not be fully understood in the west. I hope my testimony helps save lives both spiritually and physically and in the meantime I hope I don’t get caught in Islam’s deadly embrace. You will know why I say that once you read this." - From a Jihadist to a Human

Mark Alexander