Allam and Benedict: two mustard seeds

Remember when Ronald Reagan came on the national scene, he was thought to be a dangerous man because he didn't believe in detente with the Soviets, but actually thought his vision was true, the Soviet vision false, and ought to be confronted? Magdi Allam, the ex-Muslim who formally became a Catholic on Easter Sunday, reminds me of Reagan in that way. Here's Spengler's take:

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.

As Magdi Allam recounted , on his road to conversion the 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". Osama bin Laden recently accused Benedict of plotting a new crusade against Islam, and instead finds something far more threatening: faith the size of a mustard seed that can move mountains. 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.

In his column, Spengler quotes Allam's testimony at length. Allam says Christians should quit being fearful and politically correct about the subject of Islam. His own conversion came in part because he's had to live in hiding for years after having criticized radical Islam. And that told Allam something about the nature of the religion into which he was born:

My conversion to Catholicism is the touching down of a gradual and profound interior meditation from which I could not pull myself away, given that for five years I have been confined to a life under guard, with permanent surveillance at home and a police escort for my every movement, because of death threats and death sentences from Islamic extremists and terrorists, both those in and outside of Italy ...

I asked myself how it was possible that those who, like me, sincerely and boldly called for a "moderate Islam", assuming the responsibility of exposing themselves in the first person in denouncing Islamic extremism and terrorism, ended up being sentenced to death in the name of Islam on the basis of the Koran. I was forced to see that, beyond the contingency of the phenomenon of Islamic extremism and terrorism that has appeared on a global level, the root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and historically conflictive [emphasis added by Spengler].

Allam views his conversion as liberation into a religion of love and reason. Spengler says this is why he is such an important figure. As brave as Ayaan Hirsi Ali is, few unhappy Muslims will trade their faith for atheist secularism. Allam, by his example, shows that the choice is not one between accepting Allah as presented by the Prophet, or rejecting God. Writes Spengler:

What the outcome will be of the evangelization of Muslims lies beyond all speculation: that is a matter of every soul's relationship to God. But the global agenda has changed, not through the machinations of statesmen or the word-mincing of public intellectuals, but through the soul of a single man. Benedict's Regensburg challenge to Islam now demarcates the encounter between the West and the Muslim world, and nothing will be the same.

Read the whole thing.