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And neither Jews nor Christians know very much about Abraham's role in Islam, which acknowledges the Torah narrative but with significant changes and additions. The Koran portrays Abraham as the first man to make full surrender to Allah. Each of the five repetitions of daily prayer ends with a reference to him. The holy book recounts Abraham's building of the Ka'aba, the black cube that is Mecca's central shrine. Several of the rituals performed in that city by pilgrims making the hajj recall episodes from his history. Those who cannot journey still join in celebrating the Festival of Sacrifice, in which a lamb or goat is offered up to commemorate the same near sacrifice of a son that the Jews feature at their New Year. It is the holiest single day on the Islamic calendar.
In fact, excluding God, Abraham is the only biblical figure who enjoys the unanimous acclaim of all three faiths, the only one (as the song in the cab suggested) referred to by all three as Father. In theory, this remarkable consensus should make him an interfaith superstar, a special resource in these times of anger and mistrust. And since last September, interfaith activists have been scheduling Abraham lectures, Abraham speeches and even "Abraham salons" around the country and overseas. A new book called Abraham: A Journey to the Heart of Three Faiths (William Morrow) by Bruce Feiler, author of the best-selling scriptural travelogue Walking the Bible, espouses their cause.
Yet they have an uphill battle. For all the commonality Abraham represents, the answer to the song's plaintive query--Why do you treat us this way?--is written in anathemas and blood over the centuries. If Abraham is indeed father of three faiths, then he is like a father who left a bitterly disputed will.
Judaism and Islam, for starters, cannot even agree on which son he almost sacrificed. Then there is Abraham's Covenant with God. Many Jews (and some conservative Christians) believe it granted the Jewish people alone the right to the Holy Land. That belief fuels much of the Israeli settler movement and plays an ever greater role in Israel's hostility toward Palestinian nationalist claims. "Our connection to the land goes back to our first ancestor. Arabs have no right to the land of Israel," says Rabbi Haim Druckman, a settler leader and a parliamentarian with the National Religious Party. This argument infuriates Palestinian Muslims--especially since the Koran claims that Abraham was not a Jew but Islam's first believer. "The people who supported Abraham believed in one God and only one God, and that was the Muslims. Only the Muslims," says Sheik Taysir Tamimi, Yasser Arafat's liaison for religious dialogue.
Not exempt from the tripartite rancor, early Christians used their understanding of Abraham, who they claimed found grace outside Jewish law, to prove that the older religion begged for replacement--a contention that helped propel almost two millenniums of anti-Semitism.