The troubled ingathering of Abraham’s children

Passover, Ramadan, and Easter coincide this year, a phenomenon that only occurs a few times a century. The alignment of these Jewish, Muslim, and Christian holy days comes at a time when dialogue between the three faiths offers a glimmer of hope for a conflict-stricken Middle East. Last month, Abu Dhabi inaugurated the Abrahamic House with a church, mosque, and synagogue side by side, and in 2019 it hosted Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar Ahmad el-Tayeb, who signed a Document of Human Fraternity. The Abraham Accords brought normalization between Israel and four Arab states in 2020, and other key countries might join in the near future. Sectarian rivals Saudi Arabia and Iran also agreed to normalize relations just a few weeks ago.

In a region where religious and sectarian differences have driven violence and animosity for decades, do these developments presage a fundamental shift towards peace and coexistence, or a temporary papering over of persistent conflict? Political, religious, and civic leaders in the region should seize this momentum to reinforce the former scenario.

The role of religion in politics has ebbed and flowed in the Middle East, as have the relations among the region’s various religious and sectarian groups. Over the past two centuries, the potent rise of secular and scientific world views brought on by the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, colonialism, and nationalism have posed challenges to all three Abrahamic religions. Secular nationalist movements coursed through the Middle East throughout the 20th century. And many secularists believed that the role and power of religion would gradually disappear in the modern world.

The ultra-secularist Turkish leader Mustafa Kemal Atatürk abolished the Caliphate in 1924, and secular nationalist leaders emerged in Turkey, Egypt, Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. They extended the reach of the largely secular state over society and education, weakening the hold of religious elites and institutions. Muslims, Christians — and Jews up until 1948 — of the Arab world were joined together in the building of new secular political movements: nationalist, socialist, and communist. Even the establishment of Israel in 1948 unleashed a conflict which, from the 1950s to 1970s, was fought largely in nationalist terms: Arab and Palestinian nationalists vs. Israeli Zionist nationalists. This semi-secular era did marginalize the political power of religion — for a while — but did not bring peace; it replaced one form of conflict with another.

The secular tide in the region turned decisively in the 1970s. The secular nationalist movements across the Arab world were shattered by their abject defeat by Israel in 1967, as well as their failure to deliver economic and political prosperity at home or unity and victory abroad. The energy crisis triggered by the Saudi reaction to the 1973 Arab-Israeli war led to a historic rise in oil prices, and a shift in wealth and power from Egypt and the Levant toward a much more religiously observant and conservative Saudi Arabia and its Arab Gulf neighbors. Iran, also flush with cash from the oil price boom, saw the fall of the Shah and the rise of an Islamic Republic in 1979. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan that same year convinced the U.S., Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan to arm and train Sunni extremists to fight the Soviet menace. The Al Saud, facing an Islamic challenge from Iran, and an attack by Sunni extremists on the Great Mosque of Mecca in 1979, doubled down on supporting and funding Sunni Islamic institutions and movements as a way to shore up their legitimacy. Indeed, by the 1990s and 2000s, little was left of the Middle East of the 1950s and 1960s, in which religion appeared to be a spent force and secular nationalist and leftist movements defined the political — and militia — landscape.

By the 2000s, the religious wave caught up with the original progenitor of Middle East secularism, Turkey, as Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the religious conservative Justice and Development Party (AKP) rose to dominate Turkish politics. In Israel, a nation originally built and dominated by staunchly secular Jewish nationalists, became increasingly challenged by religious zealots and extremists — groups that now all but dominate the current government. In the Arab uprisings of the 2010s, secular groups — liberal, leftist, nationalist — faced off against Islamic ones, with the latter generally gaining the upper hand, either in elections or in the mayhem of civil war. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 itself triggered a wave of sectarian polarization as Sunni and Shi’i groups battled for supremacy.

For the Christians of the Middle East, the last few decades have been an unmitigated disaster. The decline of nationalist and leftist secular movements, in which they had played such a central role, and the rise of Islamic fundamentalism undermined their very place in society. But they had survived under the equal-opportunity oppression of Arab dictatorships. The U.S.-led invasion of Iraq wiped out the state and the oppressive “security” that it provided, and unleashed a sectarian civil war in which the Christians were the most powerless; from 1.4 million before the war, Christians in Iraq now number less than 250,000.

In Syria the uprising of 2011, initially a point of national unity among Muslim and Christian protesters, soon turned deadly for Christians. The regime preferred to turn the uprising into a shooting war, sought to exploit sectarian differences to weaken the opposition, and released large numbers of Islamic extremists from its prisons. As the opposition was forced to resort to arms, Islamist groups, some garnering support from pro-Islamist states and institutions in the region, others making common cause with the hard-fighting al-Qaeda, came to dominate the opposition.

In Egypt, the brief rule of the Muslim Brotherhood between 2012 and 2013 terrified an already marginalized Coptic community and cemented their support for the return of the military to power. The meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman and the Coptic Pope Tawadrus II in 2018 was an important step in restoring warm relations between Muslims and Christians in the Middle East. Pope Tawadrus II represents the biggest Christian community in the region; Pope Francis of Rome does not. Christian numbers have also plummeted in Jordan, as well as in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem. Lebanon has had its own turbulent history of alternating between fighting and powersharing among its various religious communities. Currently, they share equally in the misery brought about by the corruption and criminal unresponsiveness of their own sectarian oligarchs.

Interestingly, the religious-secular pendulum has started to swing yet again. In today’s Middle East, it is in Iran where a rising generation is making the bravest stand against religious authority and repression. Meanwhile, the leadership in Saudi Arabia has decided to get ahead of this wave by reversing four decades of policy since 1979, eliminating the religious police, and storming ahead with a radical opening of society at the cultural and social level — although decidedly not the political — bringing in a long-delayed wave of secularization and women’s socio-economic empowerment. Protest movements in Lebanon and Iraq have railed against sectarian politics and corruption and demanded a more civic order.

Nevertheless, the politicization of religious and sectarian identity remains a divisive and conflict-generating force in the Middle East. Recent steps toward interfaith dialogue and building common positions and institutions underscore the ability of religious entities to work for conflict de-escalation and peace. And the resurgence of secular forces in some areas of the region might also help in calming religious, especially sectarian, conflict.

Indeed, the confluence of the three religious holidays is a bittersweet occasion. It hints at the opportunity for a more peaceful and harmonious future in the birthplace of the three religions, but also underscores the arduous work that still needs to be done to reverse the deep religious divides that exist today.

Now that diplomatic ties are restored, Saudi Arabia and Iran must work together to end violence and conflict in Yemen, Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq, and support peace- and nation-building efforts. The Abraham Accords between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors have allowed bilateral relations to flourish, bringing great dividends in trade, investment, development, tourism, technology, and other sectors. But these trends have coincided with a worsening of conditions at home. Less than three years after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu achieved the Abraham Accords, Israel has the most right-wing and extremist government in its history, making life under occupation for Palestinians even more intolerable. Jews and Arabs across the region will not find lasting normalization until progress and a just settlement is found for Jerusalem and the Palestinian people.

Five thousand years after the birth of Judaism in the region, 2,000 after the emergence of Christianity, and 1,400 after the spread of Islam, the current moment presents signs of hope for coexistence and cooperation among the three religions. But the politicization of religion remains a potent force, even in today’s world, and religion is still ably used by too many leaders to divide rather than unite. It is tragic that the religions that proclaimed one and the same God have also generated so much division and conflict. But let us draw from the alternative wells of spirituality, peace, and goodwill that all religions offer and work toward a future in which the confluence of the three holidays is not a bittersweet reminder of what could have been, but a harbinger of things to come. Happy Easter, Happy Passover, and Happy Ramadan.

Paul Salem is president and CEO of the Middle East Institute. He focuses on issues of political change, transition, and conflict as well as the regional and international relations of the Middle East.

Photo by RYAN LIM/AFP via Getty Images