REUTERS RESPONDS TO MY TRILOGY BLOG POST ABOUT THE POPE’S BAPTISING THE ANTI-ISLAMIC MUSLIM: MAGDI CRISTIANO ALLAM (PART II)
HERES THAT ARTICLE
[This is quite a good article, by the way. Well worth going to the link and following the multitude of links that are provided there.]
REUTERS: FaithWorld
Religion, faith and ethics
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March 31st, 2008
Allam baptism makes more waves, prompts more questions
Post a comment (1)Posted by: Tom HeneghanTags: FaithWorld, baptism, catholic, common word, conversion, inter-faith dialogue, islam, media, muslim, pope benedict, regensburg speech, samir khalil samir, saudi arabia, vatican
The Magdi Allam baptism and debate about Catholic-Muslim relations in its aftermath continue to make waves. Here are a few interesting points that have come up in recent days:
At www.chiesa, a well-informed multi-lingual blog on the Roman Catholic Church, vaticanista Sandro Magister says the Vatican is more interested in an inter-faith dialogue proposed by Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah than the one it has just begun with the Common Word group of 138 (plus) Muslim scholars. Magister notes that L’Osservatore Romano published stories on “two instances of dialogue between the Catholic Church and Islam, demonstrating how this dialogue is showing promising developments precisely during the days of the controversy over the baptism of Allam, administered by the pope.” He adds: “He who has ears to hear, let him hear. In the judgment of the Church of Rome, the dialogue with Islam is not limited to the follow-up to the letter of the 138 – one of whose leading exponents, Aref Ali Nayed, has directed extremely harsh criticism against the pope for having baptized Allam – but is developed in multiple areas, some of which it believes are more promising than others.”
Our Riyadh bureau chief Andrew Hammond, looking at Abdullah’s call, wrote in an analysis,“the king is seen in Saudi Arabia as a well-intended reformer whose plans for change have largely been foiled by hardline clerics and their allies within the Saudi royal family.” One glaring example of this disconnect came recently in the Shura Council, a quasi-parliamentary body that has refused to support efforts by many Islamic countries to have the United Nations draw up a global pact on respecting religions and their symbols. This pact is one of the top diplomatic goals for many Muslim countries these days, including Saudi Arabia. One of the main supporters of this pact is the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, which is based in and heavily financed by … Saudi Arabia!
That same www.chiesa post cited above included a long analysis by Pietro De Marco, a professor of the sociology of religion at the University of Florence and at the Theological Faculty of Central Italy. In it, he rejects in detail the criticism expressed by the leading Common Word signatory Aref Ali Nayed and offers an interpretation of the baptism as Pope Benedict offering to help Islam to “seize the opportunity to exit critically from itself, to open itself to the dimension of the universal and to come back to itself as a reflectively renewed Islam.” This sounds like the invitation to dialogue that Pope Benedict offered in the Regensburg speech better known for his controversial use of a Byzantine emperor’s quote criticising Islam.
Magister’s point about Catholic-Muslim dialogue proceeding on several fronts is interesting, even if we’re not so sure Abdullah’s proposals will get anywhere. The fact the Vatican is still pursuing the Common Word option was made clear in the reply that Vatican spokesman Rev. Federico Lombardi gave to Nayed’s criticism. Check out the full text to see an excellent example of how to reject criticism yet keep all doors open to further dialogue.
Rev. Samir Khalil Samir, the Egyptian Jesuit who is one of the Catholic Church’s leading experts on Islam, has a long analysis on Asianews.it of Allam’s conversion. In it, he notes that both Christianity and Islam are missionary religions and adds: “The pope’s baptism of Magdi Allam is not an act of aggression, but an exigency of reciprocity. It is a calm provocation that serves to make us sit up and think. Each one of us must live as a missionary, attempting to offer to the other the best of what one has encountered and understood.”
The National Catholic Reporter’s John Allen interpreted Pope Benedict’s message as follows: (1) For a pope committed to reawakening a strong missionary spirit in Catholicism, receiving a high-profile convert during the Easter Vigil is a symbolic way of making the point, (2) Allam’s baptism can also be read as a statement of solidarity with Muslim converts to Christianity around the world and (3) the episode illustrates an important wrinkle to Benedict’s personality — stubborn indifference to the canons of political correctness. Read more here.
Allam has defended his conversion and baptism by the pope in another long article in his newspaper Corriere della Sera.
There have been comments on various Catholic blogs criticising the media coverage (by us and others) of the Allam baptism. The Catholic Church can baptise anyone it wants, they say, so stop making such a fuss about it. We haven’t had much of that in our comments sections but here’s an example of that argument from another blog. Anyone writing this is either wilfully playing naive or is actually naive. We never said Allam should not be baptised — we have no dispute with the Church’s right to do so. What we did was quote others, Catholics as well as Muslims, who questioned whether it had to be done with such publicity. Saying this event didn’t deserve the headlines it got shows a basic misunderstanding of both how the news media work and how the Vatican works.
The words in bold above are linked in that article on Reuters to this Trilogy blog, to the following blog post. Note the different author and the named editor for the following article, for which Tom Heneghan only did extra reporting:
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REUTERS’ RUBBISH ON THE POPE BAPTISING A MUSLIM
[[Here's an article by REUTERS with my comments in brackets and in bold]]
by Phil Stewart
Tue Mar 25, 2:28 PM ET
VATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict’s baptism of an Italian Muslim over Easter weekend was not a hostile act against Islam, the Vatican’s newspaper wrote on Tuesday after the public conversion prompted criticism in the Muslim world.
In a surprise move, the pope baptized Egyptian-born Magdi Allam, a well-known journalist and outspoken critic of radical Islamism, at an Easter Vigil service in St Peter’s Basilica on Saturday evening that was broadcast around the globe. [Why should the Pope baptising anybody be a surprise move? He's Catholic. Did you forget?]
[Some] Muslim commentators said Allam’s hostile writings and his headline-grabbing baptism [If you write the story, it's not his fault!] strained relations between [Some] Muslims and the Catholic Church [Not on the Catholic side...] and cast shadows over a recently agreed dialogue between Catholicism [the Pope]and [some members of] Islam.
The Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, apparently reacting to this criticism, wrote a front-page editorial arguing that Benedict’s gesture was an expression of religious freedom and certainly not directed against Islam.
“There is no hostile intention toward such an important religion as Islam,” editor-in-chief Gian Maria Vian wrote on Tuesday. “For many decades now, the Catholic Church has shown its willingness to engage and dialogue with the Muslim world, despite thousands of difficulties and obstacles.”
But critics of the baptism questioned why the pope chose to highlight the conversion of Allam, known in Italy for his attacks on Islam.[The Pope chooses those who present themselves to him. If there is an impossibly inordinate number, a variety is chosen to demonstrate the universality of the call of Christ. Is that evil? No.] Church experts on Islam [What a phrase! and who are they, anyway?] privately expressed concern [that would be right] that his message [The Sacrament?] could strain inter-faith relations.[Were they there?]
Writing in Sunday’s edition of the Milan daily Corriere della Sera, of which he is a deputy director, Allam said: “… the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictual.” [Pretty strong stuff. I agree. Indeed, those who have commented on this blog agree even while reacting emotionally against this. People should calm down and think! Let's have some real dialogue which does not shun the topic of violence.]
“DIFFICULTIES AND OBSTACLES”
Catholic-Muslim relations nosedived in 2006 after Benedict delivered a lecture in Regensburg, Germany, that implied he thought Islam was violent and irrational. [So, um, after many Muslims threw an irrational tantrum and killed a nun (of all people -- the cowards! shooting her multiple times) what we have today is a situation in which many important Muslim individuals want to dialogue with the Pope. I mean, what are you saying?]
Muslims around the world protested and the pope, who said he did not agree with the Byzantine emperor he had quoted [Have you taken the time to read the Pope's explanation?], sought to make amends by visiting the famous Blue Mosque in Istanbul and praying towards Mecca with its imam. [Well, now. There's an untruth. I mean. I saw it. The imam took the Holy Father off guard, but the Holy Father, with brilliance, calmly waited while THEY did THEIR thing. Your comment seems to be downright malicious.]
Earlier in March, the Vatican [The Pope] agreed with [some] Muslim leaders to establish a permanent, official dialogue to improve relations.
L’Osservatore Romano said the Vatican remained dedicated toward dialogue with Islam: “Difficulties and obstacles should not overshadow what there is in common and how much can come of the future.”
Aref Ali Nayed, a key figure in a group of over 200 Muslim scholars that launched the dialogue with the Vatican and other Christian churches, said on Monday the Vatican had turned the baptism into “a triumphalist tool for scoring points.” [People tend to say anything they want to say.]
“The whole spectacle… provokes genuine questions about the motives, intentions and plans of some of the pope’s advisers on Islam,” Nayed, who is director of the Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre in Amman, said in a statement. [And here's the whole of the wicked, terrible conspiracy: We Catholics want everyone to know the One Whom we love! ]
(Additional reporting by Tom Heneghan in Paris; Editing by Jon Boyle)
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Finally, let’s take a look at the last paragraph of the more recent article further above [with my comments in brackets and in bold]:
There have been comments on various Catholic blogs criticising the media coverage (by us and others) of the Allam baptism [I, for one, didn't bother to notice what others had said...]. The Catholic Church can baptise anyone it wants, they say, so stop making such a fuss about it. [Actually, the more good reporting, the better.] We haven’t had much of that in our comments sections but here’s an example of that argument from another blog [That would be the TRILOGY]. Anyone writing this is either wilfully playing naive [Whoopsie.. Got that wrong!] or is actually naive.[Nope, at least not in this case!] We never said Allam should not be baptised [Never said you said that, if it's still the Trilogy you're talking about.] — we have no dispute with the Church’s right to do so.[Really? Think, now...] What we did was quote others, Catholics as well as Muslims, [You mean, Muslims as well as Catholics...] who questioned whether it had to be done with such publicity. [But what does reason say?] Saying this event didn’t deserve the headlines it got [Actually, it deserved much more] shows a basic misunderstanding of both how the news media work [Careful! You might catch yourself out!] and how the Vatican works. [Well, make a distinction between the Vatican Curia and the Pope. I'll just ask you a couple of questions about the naive bit: Do you think if Magdi had been living in, say, Turkey, and he went to get baptised in a hidden manner in a lowly parish church, that he and the priest wouldn't be murdered within minutes? The Pope follows these kinds of murders very closely. He was terribly hurt by the murder of the nun after the Regensburg address. Should the Holy Father bow to a Let's-Play-the-Political-Niceness-Game of always lying ever so low -- pushed no doubt not only by some few in the media but by some in the Vatican -- so that, the actual rights of the Church will be swamped amidst necessarily increasing disdain, which disdain can sometimes be the driving force of some few in the media, and of some few who have shallow or adversarial opinions? Either the Church mankind is free to be reasonable, and to exercise Her the inalienable right to exercise religion, or the Church mankind is not free at all.]
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Now, having said all that, I must thank you, Mr Heneghan, for the well-written article. You’re a great man to have it ferociously build up a crescendo right to the last paragraph, only to drop people off with a got-to-click-on-that-site tactic. Thanks for that.
I’m thinking that you are thinking that the readers will be discerning enough to figure out the extremely diverse tone between the two articles, with the more recent one being spot on, well, with a couple of nuances needing to be made for the last paragraph.
Obviously, what got my ire up against the first article was the mention of the Pope praying toward Mecca (as if he were praying to Allah! not that anyone mentioned Allah, but that’s the logic of it). Anyway, I’ve taken the opportunity not only to correct a couple of spelling errors in my comments, but also to gain in estimation for your own writing and research. You can count me as one of your readers.
Let me take the opportunity to invite you to read a bit more of the Trilogy. If it’s you who have been racing through the chapters this past week, well, congratulations. The world record so far for reading Book 1 is nine full days. There’s plenty more, by the way, that can be used as leads for stories, including interreligious dialogue.
If there’s one thing that has to be brought up for dialogue it is the difference between sura 37:100-113 in the Qur’an and Chapter 22 of Genesis (hailed as fulfilled in the New Testament). That difference, for the first time, I think, has been brought out strongly and fully in Book 1 of the Trilogy. And for that, not a few threats have arisen, but not because I was inaccurate, only because I questioned those verses. I claim that those verses in the Qur’an are the ‘religious’ inspiration for suicide bombings we see today among Islamic fundamentalists.
Keep up the good work! Cheers! And, if you haven’t read right to the last chapter, have a good read!
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INDEX: REUTERS/TRILOGY DIALOGUE
Have a good read!
© 2007-2008 Renzo di Lorenzo — All rights reserved (for my bits!)
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