From the first translation: ...the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization...

Oriani Fallaci, even though an atheist, would have loved that statement!

Posted by: Always On Watch at March 27, 2008 7:10 AM

From the first translation: ...the indissoluble link between faith and reason as a basis for authentic religion and human civilization...

Oriani Fallaci, even though an atheist, would have loved that statement!

Posted by: Always On Watch at March 27, 2008 7:11 AM

Magdi asks the tell-tale question:

"If in Italy, in our home, the cradle of Catholicism, we are not prepared to guarantee complete religious freedom to everyone, how can we ever be credible when we denounce the violation of this freedom elsewhere in the world?"

Just as Soviet dissidents looked to the West for hope and inspiration during the Cold War, so are Muslim reformers today. Every time we accommodate Islam in our public policy, we cut the ground out from the reformers. What a paradox that the Liberals would have us believe that appeasement of Muslims is the ticket to a moderate Islam.

It is absolutely identical to the Cold War, when Liberals sold the line that appeasement of the Soviets strengthened the hand of the doves inside the Kremlin. In reality, such a policy only under-cut the arguments of the Soviet reformers...that there would be a high cost to the pursuit of aggressive internal and external policies.

Posted by: Cornelius at March 27, 2008 7:59 AM

Reason and Hope (faith) - pretty effective in the west.

Islam is the belief in unreason.

Posted by: tanstaafl at March 27, 2008 9:24 AM

He raises the interesting point that the Catholic church has been very circumspect in sponsoring conversion in Muslim countries because of the threat of persecution and violence to the converts.

What if the apostles and St. Paul took this line of reasoning? There wouldn't be any church but on the bright side their wouldn't be any Christians eaten by lions.

Posted by: poetcomic1 at March 27, 2008 9:59 AM

Magdi Allam's baptism really brings to light the reality that a number of Muslim leaders and webhosts deny, that up to 6 million Muslims leave Islam to embrace the Christian faith. For this I say, welcome home brothers and sisters!

Posted by: bigcatgirl13106 at March 27, 2008 11:40 AM

It seems clear to me that the reason for Magdi Allam's baptism at the hands of the Pope himself is the personal request of Magdi, which the Pope, being a good priest of Christ and minister to souls, saw fit to grant. Christian baptism always has a dimension of public proclaimation and witness.

To protest that these Providential circumstances are unseemly, is to be driven again into the Catacombs; to figuratively but surely hide the Light of Grace, of Life, and of the only ordinary, certain, and universal means of Salvation known to men through Revelation under a bushel, when the times call for this Light to be set upon a lampstand, illuminatig all.

Posted by: John C at March 27, 2008 3:42 PM