Isaac, Ishmael & Marriage

Had a rather interesting discussion this morning with one of my coworkers. I had to run in to unlock the store and decided that before leaving I would talk to the two employees that were going to be there today - just to make sure that they knew what to do in case of an odd situation and also to be nice and find out how their Friday nights went (which is a scary proposition with the new guy).

So the new guy starts telling me about his night. He had said yesterday that he was going to go out clubbing and looking for sex. But apparently he changed his mind. Instead of going out partying, he decided to go to Temple (he's Jewish).

But then, while I'm standing there feeling happy that he made a good decision, he starts in on some of the most extremist religious talk I have ever personally heard come from someone's mouth (I've read a lot, but this was the first time I've been able to verbally challenge someone on the loony fringe).

He started out by trying to rip on Christianity. His challenges were really pretty simplistic, generally without merit, and showed an extreme ignorance of the religion. But he never really got offensive. Just obnoxious and uneducated.

Then he turned his tirade against Islam. He started ranting about how the Muslims were inferior to the Jews. He was referring to them almost as if they were animals, driven only by instinct, while the Jews were superior beings driven solely by intellect. So I asked him very simply: Weren't Ishmael and Isaac brothers, both sons of Abraham?

He looked at me and said: Ishmael was the son of a prostitute. Isaac was the only true son. They might have been half-brothers, but Isaac was the only one that mattered because under Jewish law Abraham was only married to his mother.

Now he's not far off. Isaac was the only son of Abraham and Sarah. Isaac and Ishmael were half-brothers. But what about this idea of marriage?

According to Judaism 101, Sarah offered Hagar, Ishmael's mother, to Abraham as a wife, since Sarah was barren. The term "wife" implies marriage, does it not? And Genesis does speak of God granting blessings to Ishmael and Hagar - probably not something that He'd be real amenable to doing for an illegitimate bastard. The argument that Islam is a morally reprehensible religion because of Ishmael's parentage just doesn't hold water with me.

I also had trouble with the argument because he was assuming that Jewish law required a marriage of one man and one woman - only. No exceptions, right? I don't think that that argument holds true either. Again, from that same page at Judaism 101, Abraham and Isaac are the patriarchs of the Jewish faith. "They founded the religion now known as Judaism..." If they founded Judaism, how could Abraham have been subject to a religion that he would found in conjunction with his yet unborn son? In addition, how do you reconcile the one man/one woman concept with the fact that the Patriarch Isaac had four wives? And that Genesis seems to accept this without comment?

Of course, he had no answer. At that point he tried to change the topic of the conversation, which we let him do.

Now I have no great love for Islam. I've said many times that I believe the religion is stuck somewhere back in the 15th century and that it's going to require a Renaissance in order to maintain relevance in the modern world. Islam has a lot to learn about shades of gray - not everything in this world is black and white; right or wrong. But those issues don't exist because of Ishmael.

If Islam ever moves into an Age of Enlightenment, Abraham and his sons will have the greatest potential for being the common ground on which a cross-religious understanding can be built. But for the Judeo-Christians to dismiss Ishmael as a illegitimate bastard unworthy of God's grace because of his birth, in contravention of what Genesis says, is to throw away one of the great opportunities for peace and understanding.

Much of the Muslim world views the Judeo-Christian faiths with grossly distorted views. At this point, until Islam reforms from within, there really isn't too much hope of a rapprochement. But as we wait for them to join us in the modern world, we have a responsibility to protect the truth, particularly in areas that might be a common ground to bring us closer. To try to dismiss the legitimacy of Ishmael and the Muslim religion is to do a great disservice to the cause of peace.

This isn't to say that we should give up our defense against the Muslim onslaught. We need to defend our beliefs, while accepting that others may believe differently. One of our great capabilities is that of distinction. We can differentiate between history and the present. We can differentiate between differing degrees of good and evil. We can understand that the current actions of the Islamic extremists, don't preclude them from reforming and truly becoming the "religion of peace" they would ideally like to be.

Maybe the opportunity for rapprochement will never arise. Maybe we'll simply be wasting our time and effort in trying to maintain the Ishmael/Isaac brotherhood as a common bond, rather than simply demagoguing Ishmael into illegitimacy as some obviously would like to do.

But I think we owe it to our tradition of understanding, acceptance and love to keep trying.