Converso, Conversus

A brave man, no doubt about it. Although his courage had already been proven, as a Muslim giving loud challenge to Islamic precepts which celebrated jihad and sought to attain conquest, historically and in the modern world. Imagine, a high-profile European-domiciled Muslim choosing to be baptized into the Christian faith as a Roman Catholic. And this is exactly what has occurred, as the Pope brought Egyptian-born Magdi Allam into the fold in St. Peter's Basilica at Easter 2008.

He shall henceforth be called Magi Cristiano Allam, lest there be doubt of his conviction and his new allegiance. As Magi Allam, Muslim, and deputy director of the Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera, he made no secret of his feelings about Islam: "...the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual". Those are words of the most extreme condemnation, claiming outright that the Koran teaches violence and hatred, exhorting its people to holy jihad.

No doubt puzzling in the extreme to Italy's moderate Muslim community who would prefer that blame and denunciation be far more delicately select - aimed distinctly at the fundamentalist Islamists whose restively murderous activities throughout the world in the past decade have put us all on notice and made us all extremely nervous. But they, the moderates, have not spoken in unison to denounce violent Islam, the terror of jihad unleashed on the world.

However, Mr. Allam, now Christianized, has been unequivocal in his condemnation of fundamental Islam's terrorist trajectory, its dedication to world-wide domination. He is no stranger to fatwahs, and complies with the need to surround himself with bodyguards. His very public and Muslim-offensive conversion will, he agrees, bring upon him "another death sentence for apostasy"; the abandonment of the faith into which he was born.

There's an ancient historical antecedent to his very modern story of rejection and conversion. In the medieval church the term was "converso" (conversus) and this was not an endearing term but one of great opprobrium. Muslims, and Jews, who sought conversion - usually as a way in which to integrate themselves and to protect themselves from violent discrimination - were held in contempt by their former religious compatriots. They were at that time, as now, in danger and laws were promulgated by the state to protect them.

Much as what happens now. Some things just never change. In some Muslim societies apostasy is rewarded by death. Mr. Allam has courted death many times over. In bringing scorn upon Islam, and in his vociferous and reasoned support for the State of Israel. He is reported to have said, pre-conversion, that he asked himself why someone who worked so diligently on behalf of "moderate Islam" was "condemned to death in the name of Islam and on the basis of a Koranic legitimization".

He demonstrates the courage of his conviction. His conviction so obviously being that Islam, in his opinion, is impervious to change, to rational discourse among its leading scholars and clerics in an effort to bring it into the modern world, to better reflect changing realities. Islam was born of a tribal warring mentality and prevailing regional-historical custom, and it remains mired in that condition. As such, he has decided he wants no further part of it.

The fatwahs sworn against him imperil his life, but he persists. Somewhat like the case of Salmon Rushdie whom Britain was pressed to protect when Iran's Supreme Ayatollah Khamenei ordered a fatwah upon him. He lived in stealth and fear for his life for years, an underground existence as a famous-infamous author of great repute-disrepute. And in the end, although he was accused of blaspheming the Prophet Muhammad, he brought himself to Islam.

Raised as an Muslim, but as a secular humanist outside religion, he wrote The Satanic Verses, to describe, he claims, the conflicts between the material and the spiritual worlds, as a mirror of the inner conflict he himself experienced. That 'inner conflict' has been resolved, he has made his peace with Islam, and as a newly-minted Muslim, hopes a reconciliation will take place, effectively removing the threat that still hangs over him.

Salmon Rushdie did what all Muslims are expected by Allah to do: submit. In submission to Allah one realizes salvation. He hopes his submission will be his salvation - from threat of death, long before he is prepared to greet death. The newly-baptized Magdi Christian Allam has abjured submission to a religious dictate he abhors with the full understanding that he has been primed for a penalty of death, with greater urgency than before.

His disquisitions against the violent irrationality of Islam and the multiculturalism embrace of the West have earned him high-grade antipathy from Islamists, determined to erase the insult he presents to the world of Islam and beyond. The publication of his book Viva Israele was an interestingly provocative response to the death sentence issued against him by Hamas in 2003. The Roman Catholic Church exults in the glory of its conversions to the greater glory of God.

Islam sees this as yet another Christian provocation, the Pope in league with a dangerously outspoken Muslim critic of Islam. But the world of Islam doesn't have to look too hard or too long for criticisms against the West, or infidels, or Christianity, or Jews, or Israel, or the Pope. Osama bin Laden was recently pleased to complain of the Pope's insults to Islam, offering his own threats.

There is reason to hope, however. From within the Muslim community in Italy its leaders' response was that Allam "is a grown man, free to make his personal choice", calling for "everyone to live his religion peacefully and with respect for other faiths". Islam is not entirely immune to the prospect of change, as Muslims migrate to countries other than Islamic countries.