Conversions and conversations By PHYLLIS ZAGANO c. 2008 Religion News Service (UNDATED) Just days after a prominent Muslim journalist publicly converted to Christianity, the king of Saudi Arabia called for interfaith dialogue among Muslims, Christians and Jews. Two events: one dangerous, one hopeful. At the Easter Vigil in St. Peter's Basilica, Pope Benedict XVI baptized Magdi Allam, deputy editor of Italy's most important newspaper, Corriere della Sera, and a longtime critic of Muslim extremism. The Palestinian Muslim party Hamas reportedly put a bounty on his head in 2003. The day after Easter, with the backing of his nation's top clerics, Saudi King Abdullah called for interfaith dialogue: "The idea is to ask representatives of all monotheistic religions to sit together with their brothers in faith," he said, "as we all believe in the same God." Abdullah follows a strict Sunni interpretation of Islam. Islam's most sacred shrines _ Mecca and Medina _ are in Saudi Arabia, but officially there are no Christian churches. Are these two events contradictory? If we all believe in the same God, what is the point of conversion? If we believe in the same God and are willing to sit down with one another, how can a religious group levy a death sentence on anyone? What is going on here anyway? Muslim anger at the West continues to mount. The issue of Danish newspapers' publishing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad is congealing with Osama bin Laden's most recent warnings; some think the pope is walking around with a bull's eye on his back. But King Abdullah, who decried the weakening of the family and the rise of atheism, has hit upon a concept that just about everyone else is delighted to consider. The chief rabbi in Israel is for it, and so, it would seem, is the pope. To be sure, Benedict had a rough start with Islam with his academic lecture at the University of Regensburg in 2006. The world understood him to argue that Islam was a violent and essentially unreasonable religion. That is not exactly what he said, but nonetheless that's what the world heard. Arguing against forced conversions, Benedict quoted the Quran: "There is no compulsion in religion." Now the Saudi king is telling the world that he discussed the idea of dialogue with Benedict in a Vatican visit last year. Abdullah wants to foster discussion "so we can agree on something that guarantees the preservation of humanity against those who tamper with ethics, family systems and honesty." This is a good thing, a very good thing. And wouldn't it be grand? How wonderful if they _ and we _ could all sit down and agree that God does not want us to kill each other, whether rapidly with weapons of mass destruction, or slowly by economic strangulation. When you think of it, Islam, Christianity and Judaism are the three religions that seem most at conflict in our conflicted world. If each, through its leaders, will sit respectfully and without fear to discuss what they have in common, perhaps they'll pave the road to peace a little faster. If individual Muslims, Christians and Jews around the world follow the example, perhaps their small accommodations will reach out to the larger ones. Either way, the madness has to stop, lest we end up in a winner-take-all worldwide eruption that leaves, in fact, no winners. Muslim-Christian conversion is one lightning-rod test of religious freedom. Conversations _ genuine dialogue _ among religions is another. At Regensburg, the pope quoted from a 14th-century dialogue on the "three laws" _ the Old Testament, the New Testament and the Quran. It is high time there was another one. (Phyllis Zagano is senior research associate-in-residence at Hofstra University and author of several books in Catholic Studies.) .