Why Do I Convert From Islam To Catholicism
by Magdi Cristiano Allam
Dear Reader: What I'm going to relate is a decision of personal faith and life which, in no way, does it pretend to imply the newspaper
Il Corriere della Sera of which I am honoured to be the vice-director
ad personam since 2003.
I write this as the protagonist of a personal life experience and as a private citizen. On Sunday night I converted to Catholicism, renouncing to my old Islamic faith.
In this way and through the divine grace, the healthy and mature fruit of a long gestation, which has been lived amidst the suffering and happiness, in between a deep and intimate reflexion and the conscious and manifest exteriorization, finally saw the light.
I am especially indebted to His Sanctity, Pope Benedict XVI, who gave me the sacraments of the Christian initiation, Baptism, Confirmation and Eucharist, at the Basilica of Saint Peter, during the solemn celebration of the Easter Vigil. And I took the simplest and more explicit Christian name: "Cristiano".
Therefore, since last Sunday my name is Magdi Cristiano Allam. Sunday was for me the most beautiful day in my life. Acquiring the gift of the Christian faith during the celebration of the Resurrection of The Christ from the hand of the Holy Father is, for a believer, an unparalleled priviledge and an invaluable treasury.
At my near 56 years of age, it is an exceptional and unforgetable historical event in my personal life, which it marks a radical point of inflexion and a definite one with respect to the past.
The miracle of the Resurrection of Christ has been reflected in my soul, freeing it from the darkness of a preaching where hate and intollerance towards those "different", who are uncritically condemned as the "enemy", prime over love and respect to the "fellow man", who is always and in any circumstance a "person".
At the same time, my mind has been freed of the obscurantism of an ideology that legitimates submission and tiranny, allowing me to adhere to the real religion of Truth, of Life and of Freedom. During my first Easter as a Christian, I have not only discovered Jesus but I have also discovered, for the first time, the real and only God, who is the God of Faith and Reason.
This letter was published on the Italian newspaper "Il Corriere della Sera", under the title La Mia Scelta, on March 23, 2008. The text in here is a translation into English from a summarized translation published in the Spanish newspaper "El Mundo".
[source: El Mundo]
[source: Il Corriere della Sera]