May God protect Magdi Allam. He has shown great courage and faces the very real threat of a quick martyrdom at the hands of his former co-religionists, for whom freedom of conscience and freedom of religion are anathema. Pray also for the Pope, who will himself probably face increasingly virulent threats for his courage in Baptizing Allam himself, rather than having it done in an out-of-the-way local parish away from cameras and media attention.

This also provides yet another test case for Islam vis-a-vis the West and freedom of conscience, particularly in Europe. Will the expected reaction of Muslims help awaken Europeans, and others in the West, to the existential threat in their midst? Or will we continue down the road to soft-Sharia, the willful sumission – under the guise of tolerance and multi-culturalism – to the avoidance of anything that might conceivably offend some Muslim somewhere?