Yesterday, I prayed for peace in a Mosque, a Synagogue and a Church. It was easy to do this as they were all on one site - the Abrahamic Family House in Abu Dhabi (I went there while visiting friends in the UAE).
“Diverse in faith - together in peace”, is the concept. It has been open less than a year and already the hopeful smiles of Arabs, Jews and Christians holding hands, pictured on the wall in the entrance, look hopelessly optimistic.
The war in Gaza has now going on for three months. Heaven help us if it is still going in in another three. Palestinian children are on the brink of starving to death; the families of the Israeli hostages are pleading desperately for their loved ones lives; and the civil war in Yemen has flared up again and out into the Red Sea.
The Abrahamic family has seen better days. But the three faiths do have many things in common. The foyer of the Abrahamic Family House has a pool of water with little floating lights in front of a window looking onto an olive tree, all unifying symbols. Peace is another - for Muslims, it is one of the names of God and it is central to all three.
Each house of worship is the same size, 30 metres high. The Church of St Francis rises into an interlocking structure of ash beams. Above the altar table is an unusual cross, without discernable human features. The workshop in Milan where it was commissioned has created an elongated, Giacommeti-inspired symbol.
Above the buildings is a rooftop garden with a view of the construction sites of Saadiyat, Abu Dhabi’s Museum Island. As the sun set, some Emiratis were quietly drinking tea in front of the Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue, the women in black seated together under an awning, and the men in white.
The Louvre nearby tells the story of the emergence of monotheism
France has built a Louvre on the island to showcase treasures of the world and tell its story. It is a good preparation for visiting the Abrahamic Family House. Arranged not by time or place but by theme, it explores the coming of monotheism, and its holy books, some of which are on display.
The museum, a breathtaking structure of light and shade stretching out above the turquoise water of the Arabian Gulf, also operates as a part-time turtle sanctuary. On the wall are engraved slogans - “Si tu veux bien ecrire, savoir bien former et dessiner les lettres” which is rendered into English slightly differently as “O you who want to write a calligraphic hand/ And desire to draw and write well”. Another is “La perplexité est le début de la connaissance” (perplexity is the beginning of knowledge) which is a quote from Kalai Gibran.
The route through the dozen rooms brings us to modern art - an Islamic-style pattern in a frame turns out to be made from obsolete cables. Another is made from reclaimed pots and pans.
The tour of world treasures ends with a let-down
But in the very last room, the world’s story ends not with a bang but a let-down - a row of pseudo-writings by Cy Twombly. It looks like a range of posh wrapping paper, stylish but shallow (maybe that’s just me). My guidebook said the final work in room 12 was a huge and exciting-sounding chandelier by Ai Weiwei called “Fountain of Light”. It is still on the website but there was no sign of it in reality.
I wanted to know what had happened to the Ai Weiwei, partly because I wanted to see it but partly also because the war in Gaza has extended its octopus tentacles into the art world and I was interested to discover if it had gone for that reason. Ai Weiwei is among several artists who have had shows cancelled because of what they have said about the situation in the Middle East. (In the Chinese dissident's case he sent out a tweet in Mandarin that contained anti-Semitic tropes.)
It turned out that nobody working in the museum had ever heard of either Ai Weiwei or the piece - their attitude was basically ‘if you can’t see it, then it is not here’. There ensued a kind of artlover’s version of Gregory’s Girl where one person led me to another until finally we found a Dutch guy, who said it was swapped out in 2019 and the last room changes sometimes. Nothing to see here.
On to the Abrahamic Family House
I left, looking for the Abrahamic House. It is a few minutes walk away - if you go in the right direction. My phone went flat but I was soon rescued by Chinese Jean, another solo female traveler who I bumped into several times that day.
The place is so new there isn’t much signage. Google took us round a few wrong turns and I was hot and tired by the time I arrived in the cool shade of the marble courtyard. Looking at the smiling photos on the wall, I wondered how the people of the various faiths who run the House and worship there each day can continue to work together in the current climate. There must be tensions.
Humanitarian aid cannot be supplied as long as the indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population of Gaza continues. But the clear message of the massacre of October 7 was that Hamas do not regard Jews as human. It is hard to make peace with people who regard you as sub-human. And the suffering Palestinians feel the same - their human rights are not being respected.
Yet the team here clearly does continue to work and pray together for peace. I joined a tour around the three places of worship and at the end the guide said: “We start where we began, we are diverse in faith but together in peace”.
In a New Yorker profile of the Christian poet Christian Wiman, I came across a quote from German theologian H. J. Iwand, which expresses something else the Abrahamic family has in common: “Faith begins at the point where atheists suppose that it must be at an end.”
I got this comment by email:
"When you said:
“Humanitarian aid cannot be supplied as long as the indiscriminate bombing of the civilian population of Gaza continues. But the clear message of the massacre of October 7 was that Hamas do not regard Jews as human. It is hard to make peace with people who regard you as sub-human. And the suffering Palestinians feel the same - their human rights are not being respected.”
I noticed that you said “massace” vs “civillian bombing”.
You said “considered sub-human” vs “human rights not respected”.
The tragic reality of the situation and your not-so-implicit wording of the statement, is that much media coverage of an ongoing genocide serves to obfuscate, justify and confuse readers as to the actions of the Israeli state. The leaders of Israel have repeatedly massacred innocent people who they have repeatedly described as sub-human animals. The death toll now records 25 times as many murdered by Isreali authorities than were killed in the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th. Twenty five times as many people – mostly children.
Your statement also justifies “civillian bombing” of innocent Palestinians by appealling to the views and actions of Hamas, conflating the two groups of people.
Just as the killing of innocent Isrealis cannot be justified by conflating them with their goverment and blaming them for the actions of the IDF, you cannot imply justification of a Palestinian genocide in this way. It is morally corrupt.
I think you might need to vary your news consumption. The wording and framing you used to describe the conflict in your substack is concerning."
This person also took issue with the way I had characterised Ai Weiwei's tweet and I have changed the wording of that slightly.
Reading this was a great way to start my day, thanks Jax. Glad you resisted a joke about a a priest, a rabbi and an imam walking into an Abrahamic Family House.