US President Donald Trump repeatedly touted the “Abraham Accords” during his Middle East trip, seeking to build on 2020 agreements that expanded the number of Arab states with diplomatic ties to Israel.
The term is filled with religious and cultural meaning, citing a biblical patriarch revered as a founding figure in three religions whose adherents encompass more than half the world’s population – Christianity, Islam and Judaism. Anyone trying to build a bridge between faiths is liable to invoke Abraham – known to Muslims as Ibrahim – as someone they hold in common.
But this legacy can also be a source of division because each faith group portrays itself as the true heir of the Abrahamic tradition.
“Everybody has tried to claim Abraham as their own, but in fact Abraham belongs to everybody,” said Bruce Feiler, author of Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths.
“Even in the last two years, we have seen this battle play out in a way that has played out for 4000 years,” he said. “Everyone is trying to say, ‘This is my story, my point of view is the only point of view that matters.’”
But, he said, “the story belongs to all of us, the land will need to be shared, and the legacy will need to be a shared legacy for all of us”.
The Abraham Accords were a series of diplomatic and commercial agreements brokered by the US between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020, during Trump’s first term. A permanent agreement in Gaza could help widen diplomatic normalisation of Israel.
Abraham first appears in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible, described as a childless elderly man who God promised would be the father of a great nation. God sends Abraham on a journey that leads to the area known as Israel or Palestine.
Trump meets with Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah al-Sisi in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt.Credit: AP
Abraham first has a son, Ishmael, with an enslaved woman, Hagar. Then Abraham’s wife, Sarah, who is beyond childbearing years, miraculously conceives and bears Isaac. Hagar and Ishmael are banished, although Ishmael returns after Abraham’s death to help Isaac bury their father.
In a pivotal biblical story – retold each Rosh Hashana, marking the Jewish new year – God orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac. Abraham agrees, binds Isaac to an altar and is stopped before killing his son by an angel who says Abraham has passed a test of faith.
Isaac and his son Jacob become the ancestors of the Jews, according to Genesis.
Christianity embraces Abraham as an exemplar of faith – willing to believe and obey God.
Islamic and Jewish traditions depict a young Abraham as smashing his father’s idols as he embraced the worship of one, almighty God.
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Muslims, however, place Ismail (Arabic for Ishmael) rather than Isaac at the centre of the binding story. They honour Ismail as a righteous prophet who, according to tradition, is an ancestor of the prophet Muhammad. Muslims believe the rock upon which Abraham offered his son is within the Dome of the Rock, the gold-domed shrine in Jerusalem.
Each of the three monotheistic religions — Christianity, Judaism and Islam — have claimed to be the true heirs of Abraham at different points in a history that includes crusades, terror attacks and other violence.
At the same time, because all three faiths revere Abraham, he is invoked for efforts such as the diplomatic accords brokered by the US between Israel and Arab states.
During his speech to Israel’s parliament on Monday, Trump emphasised the specifically Jewish tradition around the patriarch. He offered thanks to the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob” – a central Jewish formulation. He was applauded when he said he preferred calling the diplomatic agreements the “Avraham Accords”, using the Hebrew pronunciation.
It may seem head-spinning that this is the same Trump who was first elected after responding to a 2015 terror attack by calling for a “total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States”. His current administration has launched a crackdown on foreign students and others who have advocated for Palestinians.
But it’s less perplexing if one pays attention “to the last 4000 years, when everyone has lived within the tension of the story” of Abraham, Feiler said.
The story of Abraham, his two sons and their two mothers is one of “tensions, of inviting people in and pushing people out”, Feiler said.
It’s a timeless story of relations and rivalries between family members, neighbours and others, he said.
“We want it all for ourselves, but we keep being reminded that we can only live alongside the other.”
AP
