Badaliya and Atonement: Father Paolo Dall’oglio and Dyingfor the Other

This article explores badaliya—a theology of Christian/Muslimsubstitution—as reinterpreted by the Italian priest Father PaoloDall’oglio amid the devastation of the Syrian War. At the heart ofthe article is the tension between dialogue (hewar) andevangelization in Dall’oglio’s ministry at the Deir Mar Musamonastery near Damascus, where dialogue with Islam becameinseparable from the Christian vocation to witness and atone.Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork conducted during 2023-25 inSyria, Iraq, Palestine, Iraq, and Italy with monks and nuns ofDall’oglio’s monastic community, the article situates badaliyawithin the political and moral catastrophes of the contemporaryMiddle East. It argues that Dall’oglio’s disappearance in Raqqa in2013 while attempting dialogue with Da‘ish was the teleologicalculmination of his theology—a sacrificial act that blurred theboundaries between mission and martyrdom. The article framesbadaliya as an ethical field in which interfaith love, substitution,and atonement converge am id war.