CONCERNS ABOUT the future of Muslim-Christian relations grew this week after Muslim leaders reacted angrily to the news that the Pope baptised a prominent Italian Muslim at the Easter Vigil. The Muslim journalist, known for fiercely criticising Islam as a violent and oppressive religion, said that his high-profile reception into the Catholic Church in St Peter's Basilica was "a historic and courageous gesture by the Pope".

"His Holiness has launched an explicit and revolutionary message to a Church that, up to now, has been far too prudent in converting Muslims," said Magdi Allam, an assistant editor of the influential Corriere della Sera newspaper. He added: "From the very moment [the Pope] learned of my desire, he immediately accepted to personally confer on me the sacraments of Chrisitan initiation."

The 55-year-old writer, who was born in Egypt and emigrated to Italy after attending secondary school, was baptised, confirmed and given Communion by the Pope at a ceremony broadcast to millions around the world.

Writing the next day in Corriere della Sera he said he hoped the "Pope's historic gesture and [his own] witness" would help other Muslim converts to Christianity to "emerge from the darkness of the catacombs and publicly affirm" their adherence to Christ. In the article Mr Allam said there was no such thing as a moderate Islam. "The root of evil is inherent in an Islam that is physiologically violent and has a history of conflict," he said.

Dr Aref Ali Nayed, one of the 138 Muslim scholars who helped launch the Common Word initiative for dialogue with the Pope and other Christian church leaders last autumn, said it was "important for the Vatican to distance itself" from Mr Allam's "hateful discourse" and criticised the high-profile nature of his conversion. "The whole spectacle ... provokes genuine questions about the motives of some of the Pope's advisers on Islam," he said. Dr Nayed, who heads the Jordan-based Royal Islamic Strategic Studies Centre, said that Mr Allam's baptism by the Pope had turned an "intimate and personal act of religious conversion" into a "triumphalist tool for scoring points". Dr Nayed was one of the five leading Muslims who came to the Vatican and helped establish the permanent Catholic-Muslim Forum three weeks before Easter.

Several Vatican officials who spoke off the record voiced their own concerns about the high-profile nature of Mr Allam's reception ceremony. "He should be told that he was baptised; his ideas about Islam were not," said one. "I don't understand why he wasn't baptised in his hometown by his local bishop," said Fr Christophe Roucou, head of the French Catholic bishops' office for relations with Islam.

The Saudi daily al-Watan reported the baptism on its front page and described Mr Allam as someone who "worked tirelessly to attack Islam". The Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano said on Tuesday that the baptism showed "no hostile intention towards a great religion such as Islam", but that the gesture affirmed the importance of religious freedom.

Mr Allam said the seeds of his conversion were planted in Egypt, where he attended Catholic schools run by Italian Comboni missionary sisters and the Salesians. Five years ago, after receiving death threats by Islamic extremists for criticising the Muslim faith, he began to look more deeply at Christianity - "beginning with many friends from [the conservative lay movement] Communion and Liberation". "But undoubtedly the most extraordinary and significant encounter in my decision to convert was with Pope Benedict XVI," Mr Allam wrote. Speaking of his reception, he said: "I have discovered for the first time the one and true God, the God of Faith and Reason."