Egyptian-born Italian politician warns Israel: Prepare for the worst.(Ha'aretz).By Saviona Mane. For nearly a decade, Egyptian-born Italian politician Magdi Cristiano Allam has been advocating for Israel from every possible stage, portraying it as a frontline bastion in the struggle against what he calls Islamic terror's threat to Western civilization.
"We haven't learned anything from history," the 2006 Dan David Prize laureate says, referring to the legacy of the Islamic revolution in Iran. In his opinion, the blame lies firmly with the West.
The gentle and reserved Allam looks younger than his 60 years. He was born and raised in Egypt to a Muslim family and arrived in Italy at age 20. Over the years he became a journalist and an author engaged with matters of the Middle East. During the past decade, he has been one of the loudest voices in Europe speaking out in support of Israel and in condemnation of Islamic terror. For these views Hamas passed a death sentence on him in 2002. Since 2003 he has been surrounded by bodyguards 24 hours a day and has not visited his native land.
"This is the least evil option for continuing to express my opinions," he says. Allam visited Israel in the week when the Egyptian court sentenced former President Hosni Mubarak to life imprisonment for his part in the deaths of protesters during last year's uprising. According to Allam, the decision is "not humane and does not take into account his status, his age and his poor state of health."
The ruling in Mubarak's case is "another sign of the barbarization now underway in the country," which, he says, has already become Islamist: "The Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis now have an absolute majority in the parliament and it is almost certain that the Muslim Brotherhood candidate for the presidency, Mohamed Morsi, will be the next president." Allam believes public anger at Mubarak's not having received a harsher sentence increases the likelihood of Morsi winning this weekend's second round in the presidential election against his rival Ahmed Shafiq - the secular candidate who was a minister in Mubarak's government. "Morsi has promised that when he is elected, he will hold a retrial of all the old leadership, but even without that his election is assured," says Allam grimly. Concerned about women's rights. Allam is fearful for Egypt's fate and for the welfare of the approximately 10 million Coptic Christians in the country, who, he says, are already experiencing "a real ethnic cleansing."
He is concerned about civil rights and, especially, women's rights, noting, "the position of women is becoming more and more inferior."
Of course, he is also concerned about the fate of the peace agreement with Israel, about which the Muslim Brotherhood has promised to hold a referendum. "The possibility that Israel will be surrounded by Islamist regimes, which is liable to happen if Syria and Jordan also become part of the process, is an existential threat from its perspective," he warns.
"Those who build their strategy on the Koran and Islam are nurturing hatred and determination to slaughter the Jews and wipe out Israel physically."
In 2007 Allam published his book "Long Live Israel - From the Ideology of Death to the Civilization of Life: My Story" (in Italian; published in Hebrew by Matar Publishers ). In the book, which became a best-seller in Italy, Allam makes a direct connection between opposition to the existence of Israel as a Jewish state and the nurturing of a cult of death in extremist Islam and the denial of the sanctity of life.In 2005, when Italian writer Oriana Fallaci attacked Islam, he still defended it, in his book "Conquering Fear: My Life Against Terrorism and the West's Recklessness," in which he argued that violence is not inherent in the religion's DNA.
In an open letter to Fallaci (who died in 2006 ), he condemned "the fear of Islam and of the Muslims depicted as a fifth column planted in the West," and the perception of Islam as a "monolithic religion with an integralist soul." Today, he says there are moderate Muslims, but that "Islam is a violent religion."
Four years ago, he converted to Catholicism and took the Italian middle name Cristiano - meaning Christian - to follow his Arabic first name. His much-covered Easter-day baptism was conducted by Pope Benedict XVI at St. Peter's Basilica, Rome. "It was a radical choice. That was the happiest day of my life," he told Haaretz at the time. Today he wears a crucifix pendant. After his conversion, he was accused of heresy in the land of his birth, where he effectively became persona non grata.The responsibility for these changes, he says, rests with the West.
"This is the second act in a wicked strategy formulated in 2006 by the leaders of the United States and Britain, [President] George Bush and [Prime Minister] Tony Blair, who supported the Muslim Brotherhood circles to fight Al-Qaida terror, which they did not succeed in defeating in Afghanistan and Iraq," argues Allam. This strategy is now ripening, he adds, with the rise to power of extremist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood and the Salafis in the entire region, from Morocco to Yemen, where Al-Qaida controls some of the territory. "The West has deceived itself that in order to maintain security within its borders, it can sacrifice the southern and eastern shores of the Mediterranean Sea to the Islamists.
It is acting as though free elections are the be-all and end-all of democracy, but it has forgotten that Hitler also came to power in free elections." The decision by the United States and the European countries to turn their back on Arab rulers they had supported for decades, and whom they had seen until then as secular and moderate leaders - a barrier against the spread of extremist Islam - is "disgraceful," according to Allam. "Overnight, the Americans and the Europeans switched to the side of the opponents, who were unwittingly manipulated by Islamist circles, whose declared aim is to impose Sharia law, which contradicts basic human rights.
The West was not credible then, when it supported them without reservation and did not demand human rights. But now, when it is blatantly supporting opponents of democracy and human rights, it is many times less credible."Hmmmm......Obama: "“I will stand with the Muslims should the political winds shift in an ugly direction.”Read the full story here.
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