Travels in the Riel World

The three major monotheistic religions that sprang from the Middle East - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - have been at the source of much division and conflict in the world.  What is sometimes forgotten, unfortunately, are the common roots of these three religions, such as their shared ancestry dating back to Abraham.

The author Bruce Feiler wrote about this topic recently in his book, Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.  But now an organization called the Abraham Path Initiative is going further by developing a pilgrimage route that will trace the path of Abraham’s travels through the Middle East.  The project is discussed in this article.

Heeding God’s call, Abraham embarked on a journey to a new land, where a covenant with God, believers say, made him the patriarch of Jews, Muslims and Christians, celebrated for his faithfulness today by nearly half the world.  That same path through the Middle East is drawing new attention as a way to ultimately inspire and promote reconciliation for his children.

The Abraham Path Initiative calls for a renewed focus on the journey itself as a way to emphasize the shared ancestry of three often divided faiths. The group hopes to draw people to the region to retrace Abraham’s footsteps…

The Abraham Path project started … with a plan to chart Abraham’s path as closely as possible, from where he heard God’s call to his burial site. The route starts at the ruins of Harran in what is now southeastern Turkey and proceeds through Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, Israel and Palestine. It ends in Jerusalem at the tomb of Abraham in Hebron.

For additional information, you can visit the website of the Abraham Path Initiative.

There is an interesting experiment going on this year at a division of Rutgers University, where officials approved the opening of the Mid-East Coexistence House, a dormitory that houses females from Jewish, Muslim and other religious backgrounds.

Muslim and Jewish women, with an atheist, a Buddhist and an agnostic included for good measure, pored over their notebooks on a couch and on chairs in their shared college dormitory. Most nights they study together and then visit in one another’s rooms to sort out the differences and seek commonalities in their religions and cultures.

According to this article, the dorm was first proposed by a Rutgers student, Danielle Josephs, who is the daughter of an Iraqi Jew.  Her belief was that:

… if Jews and Muslims could just be put together and forced to interact, something — and hopefully something good — could come of it. Both groups had their own truths, she said, something close quarters tend to challenge.

“The goal was to get in each others’ face a little bit and see if we could work together,” Ms. Josephs said. She added, “The purpose was not to sit down and sing ‘Kumbaya.’ ”

She pitched the idea to the college last academic year to have a house where Jews and Muslims could live together to quarrel and, with luck, to laugh and try to understand one another.

So far, according to the article, there have been heated discussions mixed with newfound understandings.  The point, though, is that the women have learned to live together, despite their differences.  Something that government leaders could perhaps take a cue from.