02/27/00

The Progeny of Abraham: Jews, Christians and Muslims

Unable to visit Iraq this year, Pope John Paul II, while remaining in the Vatican on February 23, led a spiritual pilgrimage to Ur of the Chaldeans, the place of origin of the Patriarch Abraham. The site of ancient Ur, called today Tal al Muqayyar, is in southern Iraq and was to have been the first goal of the papal pilgrimages during this Jubilee Year. The Pope wants to walk the path of faith to the places where God has revealed himself in human history. Abraham of Ur and his wife Sarah are the first of the historical characters in Scripture to encounter God and believe in his promises.

We recognize in faith that God promised Abraham and Sarah that they would be the parents of a chosen people, a great race which would be as numerous as the sands of the seashore and the stars of the sky. God changed the name of Abraham’s grandson Jacob to Israel. Jacob-Israel fathered twelve sons who became the leaders of the twelve tribes of Israel and the progenitors of the Jewish people. One of those twelve sons was Judah, and it was from this tribe that Jesus of Nazareth took his human identity. The Twelve appointed by Jesus to be the leaders of a new Israel (Mark 3: 13-19) link Christians, through the bishops as successors of the apostles and the Church’s profession of the apostolic faith, to Abraham’s people. The “link”, of course, divides as well as joins, both now and throughout history.

Abraham is, however, not only the progenitor of the Jewish people and “father in faith” to Christians but also the patriarch of Muslims. Islam believes that the Koran which was revealed to Muhammad accurately reveals the pure faith of Abraham, to whom the Arab peoples are also physically related through Ishmael, Abraham’s son by a servant woman and half brother to Sarah’s son Isaac, the father of Jacob. Again, what joins also serves to divide, both now and throughout history.

What Jews, Christians and Muslims share is a monotheistic faith in the God of Abraham, who gave up the stellar religion and polytheism of his ancestors to follow in pilgrimage the call of the only God there is to a new land. Christians know Abraham’s God to be the Father of Our Lord Jesus Christ and therefore Our Father; and we call Abraham’s land holy. But our understanding of Abraham’s God and our relation to Abraham’s land both unite and divide us from Jews and Muslims, now and throughout history.

Now we Catholics find ourselves, in the Chicago area, living and working and constructing a common civil society with Jews and Muslims. Christians and Jews have lived together here for generations; the paths of dialogue and respect are clear, even if much remains to be done. Our generation continues to grasp for some understanding of the Holocaust of this century, which aimed to destroy entirely the Jewish people and therefore undo the work of God himself. The Holocaust was idolatrous as well as racist. Its perpetrators attempted deicide as well as genocide.

But what is new in this generation in the Chicago area is the presence of large numbers of Muslims. Apart from our learning the story of their coming here and even apart from our country’s constantly changing relationships with Muslim countries, we Catholics need to come to a deeper understanding of Islam as a religion, as an “Abrahamic” faith. A mutual appreciation and respect among believers will anchor our relationship in the community and not leave it hostage to changes in the political or economic landscape, here or elsewhere.

The presence of over ten million Christian Arabs in northern Africa and the Middle East reminds us that these lands were Christian before they were Muslim. Legal toleration of other religious groups in Islamic states is similar to what toleration of non-Christians used to be in European Christendom. An Islam resurgent and renewed in this generation remembers the conquests, the hurts and wounds of the recent colonial period and interprets differently than do we the thousand year military and religious threat that Islam posed to Christian Europe from the eighth to the eighteenth centuries. In Algeria in the last several years, Catholic priests, monks, nuns and a bishop have been killed by assassins misusing Islam; and in many other parts of Africa tensions between Christians and Muslims run high. In southern Sudan, there is open warfare.

Christians in Muslim countries sometimes fear the re-imposition of shari’a, classical Islamic law, as the law of the land, because it seems to make non-Muslims less than full citizens. In Muslim lands, both Jewish and Christian minorities have freedom to remain but no freedom to recruit. Religious “movement” on the part of individuals or groups can be only toward Islam. Muslims here, finding themselves a non-privileged minority in our country, are therefore called to make tremendous cultural and religious adjustments. What gives confidence in all this is that ordinary people meeting other people can find ways to live together, both now and throughout history.

Islam regards Jesus as a prophet and believes he was born of the Virgin Mary; but he did not die on the cross or rise from the dead. Jesus is therefore not a Savior. While rejecting, as do Jews, Christian belief in the Incarnation, Muslims would appreciate St. Paul’s preaching of Christ as giving up the status of Son in order to become Servant (Phil. 2:6-8). The Koran declares that the “Messiah will never scorn to be a servant to God.” To be a Muslim is, in essence, to be totally obedient to God’s will, to be always God’s servant. Islam is a practical religion with a clearly developed moral teaching. Socially, Islam stands for human order under divine authority.

The clash between Islamic moral teaching and contemporary cultural mores in this country is severely felt among Muslims. The clash is just as great between Catholic moral teaching and contemporary mores, but it is sometimes less severely felt because many have become accustomed to it or have made their own accommodations. Even though our doctrinal beliefs are very different, in the contact and conversation with Islam now, the Church can find common ground in considering moral issues and the norms of public morality. Dialogue around human rights and abuses of rights, both here and in Muslim countries, is also of great importance; and, in this dialogue, each party will be helped to give up the stereotypes of history and of reporting which is culturally blind.

Spiritually accompanying the Pope on pilgrimage this year or making our own religious journeys should help us draw closer to God and also to those who look in some way to Abraham as source of their own faith in God. Muslims address God as the Merciful, the Compassionate, the King, the Holy, the Giver of Peace, the Protector, the Overpowering, the Most High, the Creator, the Form-giver. “Whatever is in the heavens and on earth glorifies Him, and He is the Mighty, the Wise.” (Koran, Sura 59/23-24) The psalms prayed by both Jews and Christians speak of God and to God in similar terms. As we pray them, let us bear in mind and heart all of Abraham’s progeny. God bless you.

Sincerely yours in Christ,

Francis Cardinal George, OMI
Archbishop of Chicago

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