Letters

The Legacy of Abraham

"Because Muslims, Christians and Jews all claim Abraham as their father, are Americans supposed to forget about Sept. 11?"
Bob Franz
Placentia, Calif.

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As an American Muslim, I greatly appreciated your article on Abraham [Religion, Sept. 30]. It was thought provoking and opened my eyes to connections among the three great faiths. It was nice to read something that didn't vilify Islam and the Muslim tradition. Articles like this make me feel there are reasonable, objective people out there who are willing to accept their differences in order to understand the commonalities.
Faiz Faseehuddin
Nashville, Tenn.

What makes anyone think that Christians, Muslims and Jews can unite behind any man, when they cannot live in peace under the one true God they all believe in? The search for peace through Abraham will lead only along the path we have already traveled to disagreements, discord and strife. The sole solution is for people of the three faiths to live together as children of God.
George J. Steele
Amsterdam, N.Y.

Perhaps the problem with the legacy of Abraham is that all three monotheistic faiths have yet to come to terms with the historical development of their own traditions. If we could see all sacred scriptures as a common record of the universal human search for meaning and not as the revealed word of God, we would recognize that for millenniums we have been reading meaning into these texts instead of getting understanding out of them.
Rabbi Richard Hirsh
Wyncote, Pa.

It is misleading to think the current conflict in the Holy Land is a continuation of the mythic struggle between Abraham's sons. There is nothing holy about savage bloodshed that has destroyed generations of innocent lives for the sole purpose of maintaining political power and control of land and water.
Makram Talih
New Haven, Conn.

When Jews, Christians and Muslims shed their exclusive claims on Abraham and recognize that he is the patriarch of all three faiths, maybe these cousins can coexist in peace. But that requires courage and compassion. Are we up to it?
Hasan Zillur Rahim
San Jose, Calif.

If God were to speak to Muslims, Christians and Jews today, would the message be any different from the one given to Abraham at the moment he was about to take his son's life? If God constrained Abraham from killing his son, aren't we, as children of Abraham, also forbidden to kill one another?
William Dodd Brown
Chicago

I wonder what response God would have received had he asked Isaac's mother Sarah to take her son's life. If any God asked me to sacrifice one of my two sons, even if it were only a sadistic test of my devotion, I would say that such a God is not worthy of being worshipped.
Joanne Mitchell
Rochester, N.Y.

Your reporting on Abraham was evenhanded and perceptive. It is certainly the right of anyone to seek interfaith understanding. For those of us who believe there is only one way to please God, however, the key to maintaining harmony among competing faiths is a democratic and pluralistic society that allows full and free expression of diverse religious beliefs.
Charles T. Buntin
Mayfield, Ky.

>> Did Abraham really exist? Skeptical readers objected to our cover story as nothing more than myth. "To treat Abraham as a historical figure is like presenting Noah's Ark as fact, complete with measurements and an inventory of all the animals aboard," wrote a Kansas man. Equally unconvinced was a Californian who declared, "Bringing together Christians, Jews and Muslims through their love of Abraham is about as likely as unifying them through a belief in Santa Claus." And a New Jersey reader went the furthest: "More important than recognizing the shared significance of Abraham would be acknowledging that the story itself is fiction. People rarely kill one another over the differences between Star Wars and Star Trek."

Of Muscle and Morality

Michael Duffy's "Does Might Make it Right?" ultimately frames the debate on attacking Iraq as one about standards and the need of evidence for a pre-emptive attack [Washington Memo, Sept. 30]. Duffy marginalizes the more important issues: the Bush Administration's hypocritical, self-serving rationale and the ignored consequences. Doesn't anyone remember President Eisenhower's eloquent warning about the military-industrial complex and its potential for misplaced power? Doesn't anyone recall the lessons of history, about how countless nations have bankrupted themselves morally and financially through the same toxic blend of paranoia, patriotism and hubris peddled by the Bush Administration? Our biggest danger isn't from Saddam Hussein; it's from an Administration's obsession that is compounded by congressional acquiescence.
Fred Drumlevitch
Tucson, Ariz.

The dangers posed by terrorists may have increased dramatically, and conventional military strategy (including nonconventional weapons) may no longer defend a country against non state-based forms of aggression. But to start a new war against Iraq is more like business as usual and not proof of a new way of thinking. At best, attacking Iraq may be explained as turning the rifle from a moving target Osama bin Laden and aiming at a more or less stationary Saddam. What the world truly needs is a strategy that fights hatred and nations' inferiority complexes through confidence-building measures in the fields of politics, economics and culture. That way the U.S. would acquire friends, and bin Laden would lose them.
Karl Ulrich Voss
Burscheid, Germany