The 3 Abrahamic Religions

A point that was brought up during this week’s discussion was that the favorable representation of Cherubim as cute angels is mirrored by the appearance of Jesus being assumed to be Caucasian. This article makes an interesting point on how cultures portray religious figures to look like the dominant racial identity – https://www.history.com/news/what-did-jesus-look-like. Thus, this idea could be applied to the portrayal of the Cherubim, originally described as impressive beings that emerged from fire and smoke. Overtime, the image of a Cherub changed from a symbolic representation of all the animals of the earth to a winged toddler, possibly because humanity can relate more to the idea of the guardians of the boundary of heaven and earth being cute and harmless, it is more of a reassurance to ourselves than anything. 

Like most things in religion, fantastic beasts can’t be taken literally; there is a lot of symbolism going on. I believe the myths of fantastic beasts encapsulate the aspect of religious thought that you must live your life/follow the morals set out by your religion or you may be subject to the horror of these fantastic beasts. My favorite example of this is Golem in Jewish lore. When brought to life, the Golems were dangerous and uncontrollable to the point they had to be killed. This could be a lesson that life is sacred and must be treated as such, rather than trying to mess with what the divine has set out for humanity and create our own version of life.

A recurring theme in this week’s discussions is the idea of religion categorizing these beasts that show up in myths as either good or evil. This black and white differentiation with no gray area is, I think, necessary for the followers of religions to be able to easily interpret the myths. Once there is a gray area the interpretations can go in any direction. 

Lastly, we discussed the connections made between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Muhammad’s Night Journey (also known as Lailat al Miraj). Everyone in this week’s discussion could agree that the way Muhammad’s night journey connects the 3 Abrahamic religions is because Muhammad met with the essential characters of both Judaism and Christianity, Abraham and Moses and Jesus. I feel that the deeper way in which Muhammad’s Night Journey ties the 3 religions in through Muhammad’s lengthy conversation with Moses, where Moses warns him that 50 prayers a day is too much for the people, for he had already tried that on his people and it was too big a burden. This shows the influence of Judaism on Islam, given that Muhammad was in Jerusalem, a city sacred to all 3 religions, during his night journey. Furthermore, Muhammad met Abraham on his journey, the foundation of all 3 religions. 

Although Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have the same foundation in Abraham, their ideologies sometimes clash thus creating tension. In a Utopian world, all 3 religions would be able to peacefully coexist. However, that is not the case. The persecution of Christians in the Middle East has been a growing problem for many years, Christians are being murdered and buried in mass graves, and many more are fleeing the Middle East as refugee’s for fear of losing their life. Christianity is almost extinct in some parts of the Middle East and there doesn’t seem to be enough being done to help them. One source says the single greatest reason for the persecution of Christians is radical Islamist groups (Adelman and Kuperman The Christian Exodus from the Middle East). Christians are being given the choice to either convert to Islam or pay a “protection tax”, and as a result of trying to escape this, the emigration of Christians from the Middle east has skyrocketed (Mikhael The Syrian War and the Christians of the Middle East). This heartbreaking example shines light on the ongoing problem within Multi-faith spaces and the religions in these places having enormous hills to climb when they are considered inferior. 

References:

Adelman, Jonathan, and Agota Kuperman. The Christian Exodus from the Middle East, www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-christian-exodus-from-the-middle-east.

Mikhael, Mary. The Syrian War and the Christians of the Middle East, Apr. 2015, www.internationalbulletin.org/issues/2015-02/2015-02-069-mikhael.html.