American Religious Leaders Build Bridge to Common Ground

On Friday, Bridges to Common Ground's Cardinal Theodore McCarrick announced the "Uniting to Protect" campaign, which constitutes the first public partnership of Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Americans uniting against criminal terrorists' violence.

On November 30th of 2007 at the National Press Club Speakers Luncheon, the Fiqh Council of North America (FCNA) will present the 2007 FATWA, or religious edict, to representatives of the American people and religious communities. Cardinal McCarrick and other Christian and Jewish leaders will respond to the FATWA in a Proclamation of Thanksgiving.

"The primary objective of the 'Uniting to Protect' campaign is to guard Americans from terrorism and its devastating consequences. The long term gain will be the building of trust among individuals of different religious and ethnic traditions," said Dr. Sayyid Syeed, National Director of the Islamic Society of North America.

The Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religions are the world's three monotheistic religions. Many critics of their fractious interrelations have questioned through the years why three groups of people who are all worshiping the same Creator of All should so often be at one another's throats.

Some theological commentators have pointed out that Allah is likely not the same Creator of All as the Jews' and Christians' Yahweh or God the Father, even though Allah is similarly conceived of as male, omniscient, and all-powerful.

Allah was at one time considered to be one of 360 gods and goddesses who controlled all human affairs, and was the tribal god of the prophet Mohammed's family. According to historians, Mohammed sought to unite the Arabic tribes under one banner and one cause, and to that end he took the Creator of All concept from the Jews and Christians for whom he had great admiration and applied it to his tribal god, elevating Allah to the status of Creator of All and merging him with the God of the Judeo-Christian bible.

Some theologians and religious historians have concluded that the hostility that arose between Judeo-Christians and Muslims shortly after Mohammed's death arises from their claimed common progenitor, Abram, whom God renamed "Abraham" to mean "Father of Nations".

According to the religious traditions of all three monotheistic belief systems, before God allowed Abraham's wife Sarah to conceive an heir even though she was far beyond child-bearing years, Sarah had told Abraham to have sexual relations with her handmaiden Hagar-a very common practice in that time. Through these relations, Hagar gave birth to Abraham's son Ishmael. However, after God allowed Sarah to conceive, she gave Abraham a son named Isaac.

Because Isaac was the son of his father's official wife, even though he was younger he inherited Abraham's estate and his God-ordained destiny, displacing Ishmael who then went on to be the root of the Arab confederation.

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