February 2020
Book Review
DES MUSULMANS QUI DEVIENNENT CHRETIENS: Signe des Temps pour l’Église. By Moh[ammed]-Christophe Bilek, Editions Qabel, 2013. Pp. 350. €19.
In this book, Muslims Who Become Christians: a Sign of the Times for the Church, Moh-Christophe Bilek shows how ex-Muslims who want to enter the Catholic Church have to negotiate a passage between direct and indirect persecution, which one might well call the Scylla of hostile Muslims and the Charybdis of Catholic priests trying to dissuade them.
Converts to Islam get rewarded in Muslim nations, while converts to the Church in the West are often met with distrust or downright antagonism. Some priests see them as obstacles to their “interreligious dialogue” and are afraid to seem complicit with those who abandon Islam. They may even disparage them as unfaithful.
One priest-missionary told an Algerian ex-Muslim who had travelled many years toward his conversion: “Have you no shame to have renounced the religion of your ancestors?”
To this Bilek responds, Christianity is in fact the religion of our North African ancestors, who were forced to submit to Islam. Proof is that they transmitted the name of God to us as “Vava Rebbi” (Papa God), a name which is alien to Islam.
Bilek inaugurated Mere Qabel, a movement to welcome and encourage converts from Islam. Its best-known branch is Notre-Dame de Kabilie, an association in the region of Paris with its own website. This site is where Bilek answers questions and gives spiritual support to Muslims from five continents. His movement gets no subsidies from the Church or from the French government and has never solicited any for the sake of keeping its liberty of action. And yet, Bilek says, the reason he has written Muslims Who Become Christians is to persuade the Church to take over his work in an official way.
A large part of his book consists of dozens of fascinating conversations between Bilek and would-be converts from Islam, a number of whom have gone on to become ardent Catholics. In a time of growing apostasy in the West, Bilek says, the role of these converts could be crucial: “we must welcome Muslims who freely want to become Christians. Either we evangelise, or Christianity in Western Europe will become a minority religion.” He thinks these converts could spark of Christian renaissance in Europe. He compares those being dissuaded from Baptism to unborn children denied the right to life.
Bilek signs some of his emails as “Jeddi Muh” or “grandpa Mohammed” and insists that conversion is “done to God, by God, and with God.” Our Lord does not coerce, but simply removes obstacles that are preventing someone from using his liberty to come to Him. He invites but does not impose.
Bilek notes that there are three major obstacles to conversion: the Koran, Mohammed and the Umma (community).
The biggest obstacle is the Umma, because the Muslim community is a fraternity of surveillance. Anything one says that can be perceived as heterodox brings all the “brothers” on one’s back. Family, neighbours and community unite to prevent any change of religion. Even in France, he says, converts must hide themselves for fear of reprisals from family and community.Yet the defection from Islam is large, though 80% of converts dissimulate out of fear.
Most conversions are due to the Evangelicals handing out the Scriptures in local languages. Letting Muslims read the Scriptures leads to their discovery of the “Law of Love.” They see the difference between this Law and the Koran, which demands enmity and hatred for non-Muslims and excludes most of mankind from divine mercy.
Some Muslims see Islam as an ethnic identity which is impossible to change. Conversion, however, is actually about one’s relationship with God, not a rejection of family, clan, or ethnic group.
Bilek first encountered Christ when he read St. John’s Gospel in the 1960s. The aridity and darkness he had known made him open to this encounter, so he converted in 1970. After that it took him fifteen years to be reconciled with his parents. His wife was baptised in 2005 after 32 years of civil marriage and 20 in the Catholic Church. While she defended his conversion from the start and saw their three children catechised and baptised, it was only in 2003 that her future godmother caused her to read the Gospels and start instruction.
The Perils of Charybdis
In the quoted dialogues of this book there are many examples of priests trying to dissuade Muslims who want to convert. They do this mainly by creating needless delays.
Melha, age 40, seeks instruction in France. The priest asks her to how her husband will take it; she says she is separated. He asks her how her parents will take it; she says they are in Algeria. He asks her how her children will take it. At this point she almost gives up. Today she is baptised, and so are one of her children and her ex-husband.
Similarly, Fettouma is made to wait 12 years before being baptised, until at last, with the help of Notre-Dame de Kabylie, she is baptised in Paris, 500 km from her home in France.
An Algerian man named Joseph, age 55, visits France after 20 years of inching toward conversion and asks to be baptised. The priest tells him it will take at least three years of travelling back and forth from Algeria for instruction. Thankfully Notre-Dame de Kabylie arranges for him to be baptised in a few months.
Another man named Augustin, age 60, born in France, a lover of old churches, and one who never practiced Islam, talks to a monk about taking instruction. It takes a whole year just to arrange it.
Besides dissuading converts by unreasonable delays, Bilek says, those who are involved in this indirect persecution will often deny that Islam condemns to death a Muslim who converts to Christianity (Bilek himself has been threatened with death on his website). Or else they will discredit a convert as insincere or accuse him of hating Muslims (as if, Bilek says, anyone could love Muslims more than we, whose families are Muslim). They will say he is motivated by a desire for privileges (in fact, says Bilek, we can get more privileges by remaining Muslim, even in France).
Of course, Christians who denounce Muslim converts get the attention of Imams and are invited to attend their forums and engage in an ongoing fruitless “dialogue.”
An example of indirect persecution is shown in the issue of the Catholic journal La Croix of 26 October 2010. It expressed “regret for the attention given to Christians as victims of Islamism, because this is to stigmatise Islam, of which numerous Muslims complain.”
The same sort of thing can be seen in the writings of the GRIC, a Catholic group of Islamo-Christian researchers that speaks of the Koran as “another expression of the Word of God,” minimising the difference between Islam and Christianity.
However, Jesus came to reveal not just that God is one, but that He is our Father Who wants to give us His life and have us abide with Him forever. This is not in the Koran. There we are not even guaranteed a carnal paradise. Besides, to put the two religions on a par is to ignore the “liberticide teachings of Islam.” Sharia means no liberty of conscience.
Dreams and Visions
Bilek tells of quite a number of Muslims who came to Christianity by way of mystical dreams and waking visions. Here are four examples.
A woman born in Paris of Moroccan parents starts, before going to sleep, to hail not only Mohammed but also Jesus, Mary, and others named in the Koran. She soon dreams of Jesus and Mary, whose arms are open, and she accepts them. Later on, she has a waking vision of Jesus crucified and realises that Islam, which denies that Jesus was crucified, is a lie. Jesus soon becomes “l’amour de sa vie” (the love of her life).
A second woman, this one of Algerian background, has visions of Jesus and dreams of the apostles and the Christ Child. She goes to a therapist, fearing she is losing her mind, but the therapist, who later becomes her godmother, invites her to read the book Ma rencontre avec le Christ by Nahed Metwaly, the Egyptian convert who had similar visions. She goes to hear a talk given by Metwaly, takes instruction, and is baptised.
A third woman, an Algerian named Tissan, dreams of sleeping by a tomb in a devastated Christian cemetery, a place that seems to her like paradise. When the same dream continues when she moves to France, a Christian friend interprets it to mean that she will die a Christian. Later on, she goes to a New Year’s party at Notre-Dame de Kabylie, meets Algerian converts, watches The Passion of Christ with one of them, discovers the Little Flower, and after a year asks for Baptism.
A fourth example is Emmanuel (born Mohammed), who dreams of a woman in white with open hands and a smile that fills him with joy. He comes to Christ through Mary, though it takes him another 17 years to reach his goal. He says that in Christianity he discovered humility, respect for women, pardon, and a joy of life. He loves his brother Muslims, but sees Islam as denying them free choice and free thought.
In these four cases, the visions and dreams are inviting, not compelling, but in this fifth case something very different happens:
A Copt who had converted to Islam is on his pilgrimage to Mecca when Jesus appears to him out of the sky and tells him bluntly: “Get out of here. I want you to be with the living, not the dead.” In my view, the stern and commanding tone of our Lord may well have been due to the Copt’s unfaithfulness to his Baptism. The prophets spoke in this way to the ancient Jews who were unfaithful to their Covenant. Bilek makes this comment on all these dreams and visions: while many learned priests and religious prefer to “dialogue” with Islam rather than evangelise Muslims, Our Lord Himself has taken up the task. He possesses all except our faith, and this is what He thirsts for. When in Scripture He finds faith in the little ones, He utters an exclamation of joy. ”
Bilek says we in the West must stop denying that Christians in Muslim nations are robbed of their rights and their liberties. We must open our eyes to the sufferings of Christians both in their land of origin and in their land of exile. We need to declare publicly in France and in Europe that all persons are free to choose another religion. At one point Bilek makes this mournful cry from the heart:
“Brothers and Sisters of the West, out of pity welcome and encourage those who leave Islam at the risk of their lives. Show us a minimum of solidarity.”