The Dangerous Road from Imam to Catholic Preacher: An Interview with Mario Joseph

Aleteia ^ | 11/9/13

[marshmallow]

His father told him, "If you want to be a Christian, I have to kill you," and tried to make good on his promise, but a miracle saved his life.

Mario Joseph was an imam at age 18. Then he became a Christian and his father tried to kill him. Today, he is a Catholic preacher in India. His case is unique in the world: he is the first Muslim cleric to have embraced Christianity, which in the Islamic world is punishable by death. In the cemetery of his Indian town, there is a tombstone with his name, and underneath it, a coffin with a clay sculpture of his size. His father told him, “If you want to be a Christian, I have to kill you.” This man is alive, and Lartaún de Azumendi was able to interview him on “The Night of COPE”:

Mario Joseph, good evening. You were 18 years old and you were a Muslim cleric. What happened to change your perspective?

I was the third of six brothers. When I was eight years old, my father sent me to a Koranic school to become an imam. After ten years of study, I became an imam at age 18. One day, I was preaching in the mosque that Jesus Christ was not God. Then a person from the audience told me not to say that and asked me who Jesus Christ was. Since I had no answer to give, I set about reading the entire Koran, and there I discovered that in Chapter 3, it speaks of Jesus. The Koran often refers to him as Jesus Christ, and in chapter 19, it speaks of Mary. In the Koran, Mary is the only female name that is named, and the Koran also says that Jesus is the Word of God.

[Cronos]

Brave man