Faith Matters: On a flight from Cairo to New York with Isaac and Ishmael

Episcopal priest Rev. Ted Thornton in Northfield. Credit: Recorder Staff/Paul Franz

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By Rev. Ted Thornton for the Greenfield Recorder 

During my teaching career I led groups of students on trips to the Middle
East. Returning from one of them, we boarded the plane for the 12-hour flight from Cairo back to New York. I found myself seated between two strangers, a Muslim man from Egypt and a Jewish man from New York. I silently nicknamed them Ishmael (eponymous ancestor Muslims, name in Arabic Isma’il) and Isaac (eponymous name of Jews and Christians) respectively.

These were men whose loathing for one another became quickly and loudly apparent. And so, there I was, in a cramped, narrow airplane seat between two of the world’s oldest and most deeply entrenched hatreds.
A shouting match erupted between them. Muslim Ishmael, leaning across me, yelled at Jewish Isaac, “I hate Jews; I’ve always hated Jews.” I asked him why he hated Jews. He replied, “Because my father hates Jews and all my brothers hate Jews.”

For his part, New York “Isaac” on my right hurled cries of “Terrorist!” at his Muslim enemy on my left. I helped calm them down, but no minds were changed. My attempts to foster at least some reconciliation and understanding that day ended in failure. Needless to say, I didn’t get the nap I was hoping for on that long flight.

When I got home, I reread Genesis 25 noting that upon Abraham’s passing, Isaac and Ishmael came together to bury their father, a striking sign that some degree of reconciliation had taken place between the rival sons. In this case religion was part of the solution.

To the extent that religion encourages people to bury their differences, as Isaac and Ishmael did when they buried their father, it can be a powerful force for hope and change in the world. For every vengeful soul in the Middle East who chooses religious violence there are many more who with daily acts of charity, kindness, and compassion choose the way of peace between faiths.

There are good reasons for holding onto hope for reconciliation. Historically and away from the sensationalist eye of the news media, Middle Eastern adherents of all three monotheistic faiths have for the most part been very good neighbors. For millennia, they’ve attended one another’s worship services in the synagogues, churches, and mosques, and come together to participate in each other’s weddings, funerals, and other religious and social occasions with mutual joy and neighborly good will.

I’ve worshiped in a synagogue in Jerusalem made up of an interfaith Jewish and Christian congregation. I’ve stood side-by-side with Muslims who routinely attend services or prayers of all three faiths: going to mosques on Fridays, synagogues on Saturdays, and churches on Sundays.

During a sabbatical year in Cairo, I served on the clergy staff of the Anglican All Saints Cathedral. The cathedral sexton was an Egyptian Muslim named Mustapha. His is one of the most revered nicknames of the Prophet Muhammad in the Qur’an: it means “the chosen one.” Mustapha put all of us to shame because he’d memorized the entire Anglican eucharistic service and other large portions of the Anglican prayer book. What some might call doctrinally incorrect behavior included Muslim Mustapha coming to the altar rail, making the sign of the cross, and extending his hands to receive the bread and wine.The medieval Muslim scholar and mystic Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240) says in his Fusus al-Hikam (“The Seals of Wisdom”) that he felt at home in all places of worship because no faith has a monopoly on truth. He wrote, “Do not praise your own faith so exclusively that you disbelieve all the rest. If you do this, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, cannot be confined to any one creed, for he says, ‘Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of God.’ (Qur’an 2:115).”
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Ted Thornton is a retired Episcopal Priest and teacher of history, religious studies and Arabic. He is a member of Greenfield’s Episcopal Church of Saints James and Andrew and sings in the choir there.

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