Life Matters - January 3, 2024
Covered high overhead by the gold dome, the huge boulder from which the mosque derives the ‘’Rock’’ part of its name, has a rocky, controversial history. According to the teachings of Islam it is the rock to which Abraham led his son Ishmael, having climbed Mount Moriah with him, to have him laid on the altar of rock, to slay him and to offer him up to God as God had commanded. But God saved Ishmael from such a fate when he stopped Abraham from slaying his son.
If that story sounds vaguely like the familiar Biblical account, recorded by Moses, in Genisis chapter 22, it’s because it is. Only, in Genesis, the young lad is Isaac, Abraham’s second born son, instead of Ishmael, his first born to Abraham by his Egyptian handmaid, Hagar. Isaac was born to Abraham by Sarah, his one and only wife. And God made clear to Abraham and Sarah both, that this second born son, Issacc, was the son of promise. The one through whom the seed, bearing an everlasting covenant, should come. (Genisis 22:19) God also had a promise for Abraham’s first-born son, Ishmael and said, “Also, of the son of the bond woman will I make a nation, because he is thy seed.” (Genisis 21:13) These two boys did indeed bring forth nations, Ishmael, born of the bond woman, eventually becoming what we know as the Arab nations and the other of the free woman, Isaac, which we know of today as the Children of Israel in the Old Testament, as Jews in the New and even continuing to this day, sometimes referred to as Israelis. There are religious Jews and secular Jews, religious Israelis and secular Israelis. Politics in Israel can indeed be complicated.
The peoples of Arabia were eventually overcome by Islam spread by traders from Mecca and growing from there, or, conquered by Muhammad and his followers then ‘’converted’’ to Islam by the edge of the sword, with most finally giving an overt or covertly forced allegiance to Muhammad as the prophet of God. Some Jews and Muslims blend into other cultures, but to be a devout Muslim, (a follower of Islamic teachings) is to stand out, to be visible, to be proud of, or cower, to its culture. But within Islam there are many divisions. There are the nominal, the secular, and the devout. Among the devout there are many and varied groups of terrorists continuing the tradition of ‘’converting’’ others to the Islamic ‘’faith’’ by use of the temporal sword. Not all Muslims agree. Politics “in Arabia” can indeed be complicated. Complicating things further is that the devout, the terrorist groups, tend to congregate, to organize in pockets among other Muslims, worldwide.
On October 7th, 2023 these worldwide pockets declared their support, through media, for the atrocious attack organized and orchestrated by the Palestinian-based terrorist group, Hamas, perpetrated into Israeli territory, killing over 1000 Jewish people in that early morning massacre. It was a surprise attack. No wait, perhaps we should not be surprised when a group of terrorists, who, as their moniker indicates, thrive on terrorizing their adversaries, attack, kill, maim and kidnap them.
Islamic terrorists are being faithful to their “holy book” when they do so. And the Palestinians have reason to be resentful. Over centuries they had spread out across Israel, renamed Palestine, to raise their cattle, their crops, and their families. Perhaps their downfall was an unwillingness to co-inhabit with the former inhabitants of this “land of Canaan,” this “Land of Promise” that God had given over to His People, the Israelites.
The Allied Powers, in recognition of God’s covenant to Abraham, to Isaac, and then to Jacob (who was renamed Israel—and from whom the Israelites, the land, now the Israelis, names are derived) in a bowing recognition of God’s covenant with Israel and in recognition of the anti-semetic Holocaustic hatred the Jews had recently endured, returned the Land of Promise to the Jewish nation in 1948 following the defeat of Nazi Germany and its “Central Powers” in 1945.
The country of Jordan, on the east side of the Jordan river, took in the resulting Palestinian refugees who opted to leave. They have prospered. Many, however, stayed in this land that had become home to them. The militant among them organized a resistance to what they referred to as ‘’the occupation’’ and formed the Palestinian Liberation Organization (PLO) which tried—diplomatically—to gain NATO recognition as a government entity. They have not gained that status and terrorists took up the self-destructing ‘’cause’’ of resistance to Israel, misnomered as “liberation.” The politics indeed are complicated.
All who stayed, together with the Jews and all Muslims in other places, would do well to lay down their arms on the Abrahamic Altar. To be, or to stay, converted to Jesus Christ, and say to themselves and to each other, “Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness, considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted.” ( Galatians 6:1) Life Matters!