Posted on 09/12/2014 6:05:59 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
Kerala, India, Sep 11, 2014 / 05:03 pm (CNA).- A former Muslim imam who converted to Christianity believes that God protected him from death threats and torture at the hands of his family members.
“The holy Quran converted me to Christianity,” said Mario Joseph, a former imam who shared the story of his conversion and subsequent persecution with the HM Television program “Changing Tracks,” broadcast by the EUK Mamie Foundation run by the Home of the Mother religious community.
The English-language interview, first posted in April 2014, now has more than 250,000 views on YouTube.
Mario Joseph grew up in India in a Muslim family. His mother dedicated him to God when he was a baby. She had rejected doctors’ advice to abort him when she had an infected womb during pregnancy.
Enrolled at a young age in a Muslim Arabic college in the southern Indian state of Kerala, he studied philosophy and theology for 10 years. He became an imam before he reached the age of 18.
After someone asked him about who Jesus was, Mario Joseph began to investigate Christianity. Studying the Quran, he noticed that the name of Jesus was mentioned more often than the name of Islam’s prophet Mohammed and that Mary, known in Arabic as Mariam, was the only woman mentioned by name in the Quran. In Islam, Mary is recognized as a perpetual virgin who was conceived without sin.
It struck him to consider why the Quran would “give more preference to Jesus” and why it says “all these things about Mariam.”
The Quran describes Jesus as the “Word of God” and the “Spirit of God.” It says Jesus healed the sick and brought the dead to life and went to heaven alive. It does not depict the Prophet Mohammed doing any of this, he explained.
In addition, Mario Joseph came to understand God as a father, something also taught by Christianity.
“Whenever I think that the creator of the universe is my dad, I have a kind of joy which I cannot express,” he said in an interview.
With this motivation, he explained, “I decided to accept Jesus.”
However, this conversion to Christianity triggered a violent reaction from family members, he said, recounting that his father found him at a Catholic retreat center and beat him badly, to the point that he lost consciousness. When he awoke, he found himself naked in a small room at his family’s home. His arms and legs were bound and hot chili had been placed in his mouth and his wounds.
Mario Joseph said that his father was obeying the law of the Quran, which punishes those who leave Islam.
He said that he was deprived of food and water for several days and that his brother forced him to drink urine as a punishment.
The lack of food and water affected him severely, he recalled, adding that after as many as 20 days, his father entered his cell, choked him and threatened him with a knife unless he renounced Jesus.
“I knew my dad well that he would kill me,” Mario Joseph said.
“When I knew that it was my last moment… I thought, ‘Jesus died, but He came back. If I believe in Jesus and die, I too may get my life’.”
He said at this point he felt energized, pulled his father’s hand down, and cried out Jesus’ name.
His father then fell down and was cut severely by his own knife, causing him to foam at the mouth, Mario Joseph said. When family members took his father to the hospital, they forgot to lock the room.
The young man then ran out and caught a taxi. The driver was a Christian and helped get him food and drink.
“That day, really I understood, my Jesus is alive even now. When I called him for my need, he saved me.”
Mario Joseph is now staying at a Catholic retreat center in India, where he gives talks in various languages.
He took the name “Mario,” a male version of Mary in Italian. He also took the name Joseph for Mary’s spouse.
“I ask (for) the intercession of Mary and I know she is protecting me wherever I am,” he said.
In addition, the Catholic convert stressed the importance of Church teaching, especially the Eucharist.
“Jesus clearly said: If you eat my body, if you drink my blood, you shall never die. And even if you die, I will raise you’,” he commented, paraphrasing the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John.
Mario Joseph said he did not expect that he would still be alive 18 years after his conversion. He said people are still trying to kill him, and his parents held a mock funeral ceremony for him to signify that he was an outcast. On the mock grave, they marked as his death date the date of his baptism.
Although he has had no contact with his family members, he prays for them and believes that “God can touch them within a moment.”
Even if they never accept Christianity, he explained, “I’m always saying ‘Jesus, please take them to heaven’.”
Islam is the enemy of Christ.
What a man of Faith! If only I could give testimony like that.
“When I knew that it was my last moment… I thought, ‘Jesus died, but He came back. If I believe in Jesus and die, I too may get my life’.”
He said at this point he felt energized, pulled his father’s hand down, and cried out Jesus’ name.
His father then fell down and was cut severely by his own knife, causing him to foam at the mouth, Mario Joseph said. When family members took his father to the hospital, they forgot to lock the room.
JUST DAMN!
Your language offends me. This is the religion forum.
OTRANTO - MASSACRE OF CHRISTIANS BY MUSLIMS
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF
“Those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.” George Santayana
800 ItalianThose who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Men Beheaded in Otranto in 1480 for Refusing Islam,by the Turks, with the Approval of Sultan Mehmet II
On August 14, 1480, a massacre happened on a hill outside the city of Otranto, in southern Italy, here 800 of the town’s men were taken to a place called the Hill of the Minerva, and, one by one, beheaded in full view of their fellow prisoners. It became known as the Hill of the Martyrs. They died because they refused to convert to Islam. The 800 men of Otranto were martyrs. But due to their sacrifice, however, the Ottoman invasion was slowed and Rome was spared the same fate that had befallen Constantinople only 27 years before.
The city of Constantinople had been taken in 1453 and for 3 days its people were made slaves or killed or raped and the city was looted, all with the permission of the Sultan, Mehmet (Muhammad) II,who was then 21.Mehmet is the Turkish way of saying Muhammad.
The people of Otranto knew of the siege of Constantinople and that when that city fell the Muslims pillaged the city, but the key moment came when they reached Hagia Sophia.
After breaking down the church’s bronze gates, they found inside a huge throng of Byzantines who had taken refuge and who were praying that the city might be delivered by some miracle. The Christians were seized and separated according to age and gender. The infants and elderly were brutally murdered; the men, including some of the city’s most prominent senators, were carted off to the slave markets; and the women and girls were taken by soldiers to be raped or sent into a life of slavery.
At Otranto, the terms of the Muslims were ostensibly generous. If the town surrendered, the defenders would be permitted to live. They said no, it was repeated and again it was no. It was the city against 18,000 Muslims and it lasted 2 weeks.
Slaughter, Sacrilege, and Slavery
Turkish troops entered and killed anyone in their path. They made their way to the cathedral. As in the Hagia Sophia, the invaders found the church filled with people praying with Archbishop Stefano Agricoli, Bishop Stephen Pendinelli, and Count Largo, the commander of the soldiers. The Ottomans commanded:
1.The archbishop to throw away his crucifix, abjure the Christian faith, and embrace Islam. When he refused, his head was cut off before the weeping congregation.
2.Bishop Pendinelli and Count Largo likewise would not convert and were also put to death, reportedly by being slowly sawed in half.
3.As was the custom, the priests were murdered and the cathedral was stripped of all Christian symbols and turned into a stable for the horses. The Ottomans then gathered up the surviving people of Otranto and took them as captives.
The people of Otranto faced the same end as the Christians of Constantinople. All of the men over the age of 50 were slaughtered; the women and children under the age of 15 were either slain or sent away to Albania to be slaves. According to some contemporary sources, the total number of dead was as high as 12,000, with another 5,000 pressed into slavery.
800 Men who Survived told to Convert to Islam or Die
The Muslim commander ordered the men of Otranto, 800 survivors of the battle, those who were not over 50 and had not been already killed in battle or later, or were not children and had not be killed or enslaved, to be brought before him. He gave them one chance to convert to Islam or die. To convince them, he instructed an Italian apostate priest named Giovanni to preach. The former priest called on the men of Otranto to abandon the Christian faith, and they would get many benefits.
One of the men of Otranto, a tailor named Antonio Primaldi (he is also named Antonio Pezzulla in some sources), came forward to speak to the survivors. He called out that he was ready to die for Christ a thousand times. He then added, according to the chronicler Giovanni Laggetto in the Historia della guerra di Otranto del 1480:
“My brothers, till today we have fought in defense of our country, to save our lives, and for our lords; now it is time that we fight to save our souls for our Lord, so that having died on the cross for us, it is good that we should die for him, standing firm and constant in the faith, and with this earthly death we will win eternal life and the glory of martyrs.”
At this, the men of Otranto cried out with one voice that they too were willing to die a thousand times for Christ.
The Execution
The next morning, August 14, the 800 prisoners were bound together with ropes. The victims repeated their pledge to be faithful to Christ, and the Ottomans chose the courageous Antonio Primaldi as the first to be executed.
The old tailor gave one final exhortation to his fellow prisoners and knelt before the executioner. The blade fell and decapitated him, but then, as the chronicler Saverio de Marco claimed in the Compendiosa istoria degli ottocento martiri otrantini (“The Brief History of the 800 Martyrs of Otranto”), the headless corpse stood back upright. The body supposedly proved unmovable, so it remained standing for the entire duration of the gruesome executions.
Stunned by this apparent miracle, one of the executioners converted on the spot and was immediately killed. The executioners then returned to their horrendous business. The bodies were placed into a mass grave, and the Turks prepared to begin their march to Rome.
Sorry.
Yes, I noticed the reference to the Koran as “holy”. But then again the post-Vatican II Church will call it holy and one of its saints even kissed it, so I guess he converted to the post-Vatican II Church. Not sure he converted to the Traditional Catholic Faith though.
You ever thought about becoming a protestant?
Nope. I am a Traditional Catholic.
This is great story of conversion. It should have many replies from Catholics and Protestants alike. But since the Muslim converted to Catholicism it will be summarily ignored by most protestants. Now if had became an evangelical there would already been a couple hundred replies saying how smart he was.
See also http://vimeo.com/53756799.
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