> March 26, 2008
> Convert Rage builds: Jihadist website in Italy attacks Pope's baptism of
> Muslim convert
> http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/020454.php
> Will riots follow?
>
> "Italy: Islamist website attacks Vatican baptism," from AKI (thanks to Sr.
> Soph):
>
> Rome, 26 March (AKI) - An Islamist website has condemned the controversial
> baptism of Italian Muslim journalist Magdi Allam and questioned the strength
> of his previous commitment to the Muslim faith.
> The site, linked to the Islamist Hamas movement in the Palestinian
> territories says that Allam was nominally Muslim, and that he admitted to
> have never practised Islam and to have never prayed in his life.
>
> The website also blasted the Western press for saying that Allam was "a
> prominent Muslim", and the "truth is that he was neither Muslim nor
> prominent."
>
> "The problem lies in the vindictive atmosphere surrounding the conversion
> ceremony, including the anti-Islamic allusions and insinuations," says the
> article.
>
> Allam was also quoted in a book that he wrote titled "Long Live Israel",
> saying that "the root of evil is innate in an Islam that is physiologically
> violent and historically conflictual."
>
> The article then responded to Allam's quote and spoke of Christianity's
> 'conflictual history', by naming bible passages, crusades, holocausts,
> pogroms, inquisitions, world wars and ethnic cleansings, "committed in the
> name of Jesus".
>
>
> Bible passages? A dangerous game, as there is no open-ended and universal
> command in the Bible to wage war against unbelievers, as there is in the
> Qur'an (9:29).
>
> "As to the issue of violence, Allam is equally ignorant of historical
> facts," said the article.
> "Because if a religion is to be judged solely by the behaviour of its
> followers, then Christianity stands out as the main candidate for being the
> most violent religion under the sun."
>
>
> Sure, after one whitewashes Islam's bloody history, this is perfectly true.
>
> The article, written by a Palestinian commentator, concludes by saying
> that Muslims and Christians are compatriots all over the world, and that
> each community must be sensitive to the sensibilities and feelings of the
> other.
> That only seems to go one way, however.
>
> Meanwhile yesterday, the Milanese imam Yahya Pallavicini, vice-president
> of the Islamic Religious Community in Italy, described Allam's baptism as an
> "honest intellectual mistake" that had been committed with the complicity of
> the Vatican....
>
>