Benedict XVI Baptizes a Muslim

What are we to think of the provocative act consummated by Pope Benedict XVI during Holy Week?

Here’s what the New York Times thought in a piece by Ian Fisher.

Days after Osama bin Laden issued a threat against Europe that included an accusation that the pope was involved in a “new Crusade” against Islam, Magdi Allam, an Egyptian-born writer protected by Italian bodyguards because of his criticism of radical Islam, was baptized by the pope Saturday night and received his first holy communion.

You can see the liberal line here. Osama was right! The pope is leading a “new Crusade” against Islam.

You really wonder about these liberals sometimes. It’s OK for liberals to evangelize for liberalism in the schools and universities. It’s all right for 90 percent of journalists to be liberals and to be advancing their world-view every day in the media.

But God forbid that the pope should try to advance Christianity!

Of course the mysterious writer who calls himself “Spengler” got right on the case.

A self-described revolution in world affairs has begun in the heart of one man. He is the Italian journalist and author Magdi Cristiano Allam, whom Pope Benedict XVI baptized during the Easter Vigil at St Peter’s. Allam’s renunciation of Islam as a religion of violence and his embrace of Christianity denotes the point at which the so-called global "war on terror" becomes a divergence of two irreconcilable modes of life: the Western way of faith supported by reason, against the Muslim world of fatalism and submission.

Well, you certainly wouldn’t read stuff like that in the New York Times!

Now why do you think that Magdi Cristiano decided to convert? According to Spengler, he said that:

[T]he challenge that Pope Benedict XVI offered to Islam in his September 2006 address at Regensburg was "undoubtedly the most extraordinary and important encounter in my decision to convert".

So the media campaign to discredit the pope’s Regensburg address was less than a complete success.

Spengler is naturally pleased with all this.

Before Benedict’s election, I summarized his position as "I have a mustard seed and I’m not afraid to use it." Now the mustard seed has earned pride of place in global affairs.

The thing to remember in trying to understand all this is this fact. Two-thirds of the global adherents to Christianity in the Global South are women. What, you may ask, is the particular attraction of Christianity for women? After all, it’s a patriarchal religion that wants to keep women in their place, right?

That’s the liberal line, but like most liberal notions, I suspect it is wrong. No, I think that women are attracted to Christianity because it is a religion of love. God loves you, and he wants you to love him back.

For women, we know, the most important thing in their lives is relationships. That’s a silly way of saying that women live for love: love for their children, love for their mothers, love for their “best friend,” even love for their husbands. Lord Byron:

Man’s love is of man’s life a thing apart,

’Tis woman’s whole existence.

And it’s not just me saying this. Go read the pope’s two encyclicals: “Deus Caritas Est,” or God is Love, and “Spe Salvi,” In Hope We are Saved. You will find they are both absolutely drenched in love and hope. Girl stuff, right?

When women are confronted by a choice between a religion of love and a religion of world conquest, what you you think they would choose?

Back in the days immediately after the Cold War wise heads recognized that the war was conducted on two fronts, the political/military front led by the United States and the religious front led by John Paul II, the Polish pope.

Now we are in the war against Islamic extremism, and we have once again the United Staes leading on the political/military front. This time there’s a new pope, Benedict XVI, the German pope, leading on the religious front.

With an alliance like that, I’d say that something’s got to give.