Spiritual diplomacy and the Abrahamic commonality

The involvement of the Abrahamic interfaith or covenant between the three religions in the diplomacy and discourse of states in foreign policy really only occurred in recent years, from the side of the United Arab Emirates. This coincided with or was in harmony with the joint influence or work with Al-Azhar, the Council of Wise Men, and the Forum for Peacebuilding — from raising the banner of tolerance and mutual understanding to entering through the common Abrahamic path, to the Document of Human Fraternity between the Sheikh of Al-Azhar and the Pope of the Vatican (February 4, 2019), to the Charter of the New Covenant of the League of Virtue from the Forum for Peacebuilding, led by Sheikh Abdullah bin Baya, also in 2019. Both declarations originated from Abu Dhabi, as is well known. Why focus on this topic and this saying now? It is due to two reasons: the death of the Catholic theologian Hans Küng, who in the last three decades was concerned with commonalities in the ethics of religions, and the publication of a book in Arabic titled: "Spiritual Diplomacy and the Abrahamic Commonality: The Colonial Plan for the New Century"! In essence, the issue of Abrahamic or the central figure of Abraham, the father of the prophets in the three religions (Judaism, Islam, and Christianity), is purely theological. It was considered by Jesuit and Franciscan Catholic circles in the 1950s under the influence of the prominent orientalist Louis Massignon (d. 1961), and among its supporters were French, Italian, and Swiss clergy (Hans Küng), and Lebanese figures like Michel Hayek, who wrote a thesis on Abraham in the Quran, and Joachim Mubarak, both of whom were students of Massignon. All of this had broad echoes in the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and its final document. The topic was "the exclusivity of truth and salvation"; the Council’s document states that Jews and Muslims share in salvation, considering monotheism and the universal Abrahamic call, as shown in the Old Testament and the Quran. This shared principle formed the basis of all dialogue calls since the sixties. Initially, neither Jewish theologians nor Protestant evangelicals were enthusiastic about it, each for their own historical and doctrinal reasons. In reality, diplomacy with a religious cover was used politically in dialogue between Christians and Muslims since the 1950s. But the users were from American evangelical churches (at the conferences in Pakistan and Bhamdoun in Mount Lebanon), and two issues were strongly linked to political matters: faith and freedom, in opposition to atheism and communist tyranny. Therefore, it did not have a positive resonance among Muslims invited to dialogue, who were non-officials. The slogans of faith and freedom were renewed (without mentioning Abraham either) in the late 1980s, during Reagan’s era, the hero of Star Wars, and at the same time to attract Pope John Paul II as a proponent of revolution in Poland. Similarly, even Afghan revolutionaries became jihadists of freedom and faith in the face of communist tyranny! The Islamic narrative parallels the Jewish narrative in descending from Abraham through Isaac (the ancestor of the twelve tribes) and Ishmael (the great ancestor of the Prophet Muhammad), calling through monotheism. But the initial debate about descent from Abraham was not with Judaism but with Christianity in the Arabian Peninsula and Levant. Muslims considered themselves a trend or branch (the Hanifiyya) within the towering Abrahamic tree, so much so that even the Kaaba in Mecca was built in part by Abraham and his son Ishmael from Hagar. The Muhammadan call was, in fact, a threat to Jews. In belief, they denied both religions, as they saw themselves as the sole heirs of Abraham’s religion and land. For Christians, however, the central figure in religion is Christ, and the existence of the whole world, including Abraham, is explained through him, as he was, like all previous prophets, a herald of Christ. If you, Muslim or Jew, want to be truly Abrahamic, then you must believe in the divinity of Christ just as Abraham believed, according to this belief! This deep-rooted belief seems to stem from the differing views of Abraham in the Quran and Islam, even between Father Michel Hayek and Father Joachim Mubarak. According to Hayek, the Prophet Muhammad is the central figure in Islam, while Mubarak sees that the Quran in Meccan and Medinan surahs considers the truth of the Prophet’s call to come from his honesty in following his grandfather Abraham, whom Judaism dominated and Christianity radically reinterpreted. Judaism and Islam are two historic religions, while Christianity is a supra-historical religion. In any case, Catholic Christianity made a significant breakthrough toward history when it considered the Abrahamic as a salvific and moral unifier among the three religions... and to this inclusive horizon, President Sadat aimed when he thought of the meeting of the three religions in Sinai, the Abrahamic peace. It is true that spiritual or religious diplomacy (not Abrahamic) was used intensively after 2001, but it was an apologetic, perhaps exclusionary, approach, not aimed at mutual recognition or integration. That is why Pope Francis’s Abrahamic diplomacy focused on the values of encounter within the Abrahamic, including tolerance, mercy, compassion, brotherhood, hospitality, neighborliness, justice, and peace, which Hans Küng discovered amidst the clouds of historical and present conflicts—not only among the Abrahamic religions but also in Buddhism and Hinduism. What was correct in the past, and is not correct today, is to consider the Abrahamic commonality as a colonial discourse because some American or other figures mentioned or preached it, or called for it. Muslims have suffered, as their religion has, from exclusion for long ages, especially by the dominant Christianity. The situation worsened with extremist and terrorist currents. As human beings, and as followers of a universal religion, and as part of our dignity and humanity, we have a great interest in this mutual recognition, which Pope Francis advocates and strives to realize, and in which major religious and civil institutions and significant political entities are involved. Nothing of this constitutes a "colonial" imitation or action. Let us rid ourselves of illusions and schizophrenia; we do not want to fear the world, nor to frighten it, but to be and remain part of its present and future.