|
By Luca Marcolivio
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.”
He added: “There is a greater and more
subliminal danger than the terrorism of ‘cut-throats.’ It is the
terrorism of the ‘cut-tongues,’ that is, the fear of affirming
and divulging our faith and our civilization, and it brings us to
auto-censorship and to deny our values, putting everything and the
contrary to everything on the same plane: We think of the Shariah
applied even in England.
“The one called ‘a great one,’ that is, to
always give to the other what he wants, is exactly the opposite of
the common good, perfectly indicated by Jesus: ‘Love your neighbor
as yourself.’ That evangelical precept confirms for us that we
cannot want good for the rest if we do not first love ourselves. The
same is true for our civilization.
“Contrary to that principle is indifference
and multiculturalism that, without any identity, pretends to give
all kinds of rights to everyone. A result of multiculturalism was
the imposition of social solidity and the development of ghettos and
ethnic groups in perpetual conflict with indigenous populations.”
The journalist recounted: “This led me to
consider the third great binomial of Christian civilization: that
regarding rules and values, a key for a possible ethical rescue of
modern Europe. The old world, nevertheless, is a colossus of
materiality with feet of clay. Materialism is a globalized
phenomenon, unlike faith, which is not.”
Responding to a question about a possible
compatibility between faith and reason in Islam, Allam contended
that “unlike Christianity, the religion of God incarnate in
man,” Islam is made concrete in a sacred text that, “being one
with God, is not interpretable.”
“The very acts of Mohammed, documented by
history, and which the Muslim faithful themselves do not deny,
testify to massacres and exterminations perpetrated by the prophet.
Therefore, the Quran is incompatible with fundamental human rights
and non-negotiable values. In the past, I tried to make myself the
spokesman of an Islam moderate in itself.”
Regarding interreligious dialogue between
Christians and Muslims, Allam said that it is possible only “if we
are authentically Christian in love, including toward Muslims. If we
make dialogue relative, we will instigate our questioners to see us
as infidels, and therefore as land to be conquered.”
The journalist emphasized for the students the
importance of an education that goes back to transmitting “an
ethical conception of life, with values and rules at the center of
everything.” A negation of such principles, he contended, “is
wild capitalism, which, paradoxically, has its maximum development
in communist China.”
“We cannot conceive of the person in
‘business’ terms,” he concluded, “and we have to find rules
of co-existence that are not founded on materialism. We should
redefine our society based on being and not on having.”
|
