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A Former Catholic writes to Mr. Idris Tawfiq.
<< Ali Sina's first
letter to Mr. Idris Tawfiq
2007/08/21
Dear Mr Tawfiq,
I was quite disappointed when I read you wouldn't accept the invitation to
debate with Mr Ali Sina. Partly at Mr Ali Sina's suggestion (contained in
his comment attached to mine on FFI site), but mostly out of my own
initiative, I'm writing this letter in order to ask you to rethink your
decision. My opinion is that it would be extremely interesting to read
directly from the testimony of a convert to Islam such as yourself what it
was that lead him to embrace Muhammad's religion and to stand up for it.
Of course, I know you've set up your internet site and I did browse
through the material you posted there. Nonetheless, I'm sure that openly
debating with an apostate from Islam would help many people to understand
much better how you matured your religious convictions and how they
eventually brought you to leave the Roman Catholic Church and apostatise
from Christianity.
I read the messages posted on FFI which you received from some people who
wrote you in order to prompt you to accept Mr Ali Sina's offer. I must say
I found your reply rather unsatisfactory. It gave me the unpleasant
feeling you were somehow weaseling out of the invitation in order to avoid
some sort of face-off. I wonder if you feared that what was intended to be
the opportunity of initiating a dialogue with critics of Islam might turn
into an embarrassing situation for you. You can be sure you'll have to
face no hostility if you consent to being our guest on FFI. Since I'm not
a member of the FFI team, when I say "our guest" I simply
believe I'm speaking also on behalf of all the people who were
disappointed at your refusal and would be happy if you changed your mind.
I'd like to remind you that it was an honour bestowed on us all, when a
much revered personality such as His Honorable Eminence Ayatollah Hossein
Montazeri replied with a letter to Mr Ali Sina and we all were able to
read the cleric's arguments. I sincerely hope that His Eminence's very
kind response may be of some inspiration to you.
Although you're a Moslem now, I'm not sure it's your obligation to shun
the people who expect you to share your personal experience of converting
to Islam and to express freely your thoughts in an honest exchange of
views. I believe that if we're in good faith and our convictions are
firmly rooted in our consciences, we shouldn't be afraid of finding
ourselves face to face, as it were, with people whose opinions and beliefs
are irreconcilable with ours. I have no doubt there's always something
that can be learnt from those whose experiences brought them to walk very
different paths in their lives. If there's nothing to learn from them
directly, we can certainly derive a precious lesson from their mistakes if
they've made any. This conviction of mine is what brings me to think an
open debate between you and Mr. Sina would most certainly benefit
non-Moslems and Moslems alike and I don't have the least doubt you share
the same view as mine on this.
As I was saying, I have no doubt about the beneficial effect of a dialogue
between a convert and an apostate, or, if you allow me, between two
apostates. However, besides that objective consideration, there are a few
things I'd like to tell you in order to make it clear why I'm looking
forward to reading your arguments. Although I'm now an atheist, I was
brought up in a Roman Catholic family and I can't help finding it annoying
that some suspicion of cowardice or hypocrisy may asperse even a former
Catholic's reputation. You may have eventually adopted contrasting beliefs
to those you probably held before your conversion, but you ought to
understand your behaviour affects many other people, too, and not just
yourself and your present-day coreligionists. Converting to Islam is one
thing and anybody is free to turn Moslem, if they so wish, although you
must agree no-one can leave Islam just as easily as it is to embrace it.
Yet being overly public about one's new religious ideas and turning
oneself into a media star is definitely another matter. The simple fact
you've made it public that you were a priest and that your biographical
data has now become da'wa repertoire does not entitle you, in my opinion,
to elude the questions that many non-Moslems and former Moslems now
certainly crave to ask you. If you had stoically led a life in hiding, so
to speak, I'd have had no objection about the way you exerted your
liberties, including that of changing your religion or even renouncing
them altogether. But given the fact now you've become a prolific writer
and an islamic propagandist, I reckon it has turned into a matter of
personal honour whether to debate or to keep pretending Islam and the
Moslems are the only reality, while the rest of the world doesn't exist.
Obviously, you may disagree with me: in
Italy
they say �Il mondo �
bello
perch� � vario,� (The
world is beautiful because of its diversity) and I subscribe to that. I
wonder if it's reservedness that keeps you away from what you may wrongly
perceive as malevolent curiosity. However, a trait in the character hardly
relieves anybody from moral duties, provided they can be sensed as such,
of course.
Perhaps the tone of this letter may sound somewhat inappropriate here and
there. The truth is it always irritates me to see how some people disdain
the invitation to debate with as honourable a man as Mr. Sina. However, if
you really won't change your mind, I shall respect any decision you'll
make, even if I'm certain very few people will respect the man who made it
if it means you'll turn down Mr. Ali Sina's invitation again.
One last thing: after reading your reply posted on FFI I took the liberty
of analysing it. The comment I signed as toshiro68 can still be found at
the following address:
http://www.news.faithfreedom
.org/index.php?name=News&file
=article&sid=1408 (see bellow)
You can also find it attached to this message as a plain RTF document
which you can open in any word processor.
Sincerely,
Toshiro.
by toshiro68 (iblis_al_hanif@holy_devil.org)
on Jul 17, 2007 - 12:27 PM
|
Mr. Tawfiq wrote: "It is
always a cause of great sadness when people feel that they can no
longer practice as Muslims. Allah knows best and He knows the
secrets of our hearts. It is He who will bring us to account and
judge us all one day."
It's almost 50 words to say absolutely nothing reasonable.
Ready-made sentences almost to mourn on the loss of a Moslem
brother, who actually was born again after abandoning Islam. The
Moslems feel no sadness for a Moslem who turns away from Islam: they
feel anger and they'll try anything to murder the apostate. Allah's
knowledge of human thoughts is a formulaic expression quoted freely
from the Qur'an. Allah's final judgement is another free koranic
formulaic expression which sounds a bit of a threat. Shooting the
breeze...
Mr. Tawfiq:
Interfaith dialogue with Moslems is a nonsense. They think Islam is
the only religion and that the Qur'an is Allah's speech word by
word, so what kind of interfaith exchange can anyone expect to have
with a bunch of fanatics? If they believe Muhammad the thief,
murderer, liar, rapist and pedophile was a prophet, what's there to
talk about with Moslems? The Christians cannot consider and respect
Muhammad as a prophet: it would be a moral suicide if they did and
you know that all too well.
Instead of wasting time in Edimburgh, where the safety of all
citizens is warranted by the local laws, including the liberty for
the Moslems to practice their cult, you might have more fruitfully
delivered your sermons in any other country where the rights of the
non-Moslems are violated brutally and daily. I suppose there were
many Pakistani Moslems attending the meeting. Why not try the same
thing in Pakistan and have the same debate in a mosque? Especially
now, that the Moslems won't allow the Christians to profess their
creed within the walls of their churches.
Mr. Tawfiq:
No, I'm sorry: you're not allowed to say that. You have no sense of
shame any longer? This is too much to take. We're speaking of the
Moslems on one hand and the others (who may be Christians or not) on
the other. Moslems and Christians are not people of the same faith:
it's outrageous that you should even dare to say that. Good Moslems
are not like good Christians, good Hindus or good Buddhists: good
Moslems are scumbags, precisely because it's their faith that tells
them to behave viciously, perversely and hideously. The Moslems
don't fear to live among Christians: it's the Christians who live in
fear among the Moslems.
Mr. Tawfiq: The experience was deeply
moving and I feel it was far more constructive than finding fault in
the beliefs of others.
Then you must have ignored a lot of passages in the Qur'an. Not to
mention the fact you must have somehow by-passed a lot of your new
beloved prophet's sayings. Are you living in denial of the evidence?
Mr. Tawfiq: As a former Roman Catholic
priest, I still have the greatest respect for what Christians
believe and I still hold in honour all of those good people with
whom I lived and worked for so many years.
Perhaps. But you sound much like a delusional self-taught Moslem. My
feeling is that you're trying to christianise the Moslems, make them
more like Christians. You'll fail.
Mr. Tawfiq: In all my work, I never try to
persuade or cajole, to debate or to argue.
Is that what you require from your opponents, too? Safe, isn't it?
Then we might as well as go talk up the walls if it has to be a
dialogue between people who pretend to be deaf and blind to reality.
Mr. Tawfiq: As Muslims we are called simply
to present the sweet and gentle message of Islam and leave all else
in the hands of Allah.
No, wait. Here is where the catholic priest steps back in. I'm sure
you meant: As Christians we are called simply to present
the sweet and gentle message of Jesus and leave all else in
the hands of God.
Mr. Tawfiq: My own experience of Islam has
been deeply touching and enriching. Like all Muslims, I see that
Islam is perfect, although we are not.
I wonder what you mean by perfection while the thought of islamic
perfection just gives me the creeps. Your sentence again is a rehash
of some christian formula... Experiencing Jesus... Jesus is the
perfect Master... we're all sinners... I sense a delusional catholic
is trying to turn rabid wolves into meek sheep.
Mr. Tawfiq: If ever we have given bad
example to others, which has given them a false impression about
Islam, it is deeply to be regretted.
Then you do have a lot to regret. Perhaps you live like a hermit,
but we do watch the TV, we read the news and we do see the way
Moslem behave in our own towns. We hear what they say. We read what
they write on their internet sites and in their books. Above all we
have access to all of their sacred literature: Qur'an, hadith
collections, biographies and commentaries. Do you still believe you
can go on behaving like a Christian within Islam?
Mr. Tawfiq: My reply to you is not intended
to refute anything or anyone, nor to accept the challenge for a
debate. I simply offer these words in sincerity and hope they will
be received in the same spirit.
You prefer not to expose yourself to those who really know what
Islam is about. That's safe for you. You can go on thinking you're a
good man although you've chosen to follow a monster. As a catholic
Jesus represented your means of salvation, but now that you have
rejected him to worship a psychopath who only lived for sex, power
and wealth, I wonder how you can justify your conversion. Not that
you need to give any of us an explanation, but expounding what made
you choose for the incarnation of evil I'm sure interests us all.
I'd be overjoyed to discuss some theological questions with you. I'd
never address a catholic priest the way I'm doing now, but since
you've taken off your cassock I wonder why you have to hide cowardly
behind your new faith and your unoriginal talks when it's clear that
the Moslems, your new brothers in Allah, are those who slander,
persecute and murder the non-Moslems in every islamic country.
Mr Tawfiq, if you have some of the sense of honour and duty you must
have had as a RC priest, if it's true you still respect the people
you worked with and, above all, if you're sincerely convinced Islam
is the religion you have described, then accept Mr Sina's invitation
to debate. |
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