A recent cause of discontent in Florida

There was a recent story about an Islamic group in Florida who put up a bunch of ads on buses promoting Islam. An ensuing public discussion saw a Muslim leader in the community say that, in his view, since all Muslims are people of God, then Abraham, Moses and Jesus must also have been Muslim.

I think the whole notion is ridiculous to start with, since there was no such thing as Islam when these guys were alive, but it got me thinking about something.

Only a misinformed Christian (i.e. most of them) is unaware of the fact that Muslims explicitly worship the same God as Christians (although this depends on whether you think God 'sans Jesus' is the same God). However, nearly every Muslim is aware of this, since the Koran states early on that they are following the tradition of the teachings of the Jews and the Christians. The main difference is that they see Mohammed as the last prophet.

So what did I get thinking? Well, just imagine this...

We come to an agreement that all Christians and Jews are "people of God." We then come to an agreement that Muslims are also "people of God", but that we don't agree that Mohammed was a prophet.

Muslims can then also agree that all Muslims are "people of God" and that the Jews and Christians are also "people of God", but with the knowledge that the Jews and Christians are greviously mistaken in their disbelief of the virtue of Mohammed's sacred nature.

Rather than discussing theological sounding, technical sorts of phrases, such as "Ambrahamic faiths", or "people of the book" (which refers to the Torah and emphasizes differences), we can begin to embrace a common ground that we are all people of God.

With such a striking commonality, we can then see each other somewhat more as humans before getting back to the nitty gritty of details such as whether prayer must be towards Mecca, priests must intercede between us and God, or more importantly whether one's decision to accept the word of one holy man or another as God's most recent message is a legitimate basis for eternal harmony or damnation. After all, these are mere details, right? What really matters is that we Jews, Muslims and Christians can commune together in a spiritual development that questions what God would really want our societies to make of themselves.


As for me? I largely see religion as an evolutionary factor in social and cultural development that promotes social cohesion. I'm not too concerned if that sounds like mumbo jumbo, 'cause it makes sense to me and I'm not really interested in explaining myself for now. But why on earth should my atheism get in the way of the "people of God" seeking some commonality?

Of course, there's nothing particularly original in what I'm saying. I'm just using different words to say it. As Freud discussed, with respect to his concept of "the narcissism of small differences", I'm not sure that accepting our commonalities would solve much - after all, much more insignificant theological differences between sects of Christianity were historically quite sufficient cause to mobilize the populace to fight foreign nations. All the same, I don't expect rejoicing our commonality as "the people of God" could make things worse.


Since Florida was the lead-in ... I just have to say that I can no longer point to the ongoing rise on coastal property values in Florida as one of the most costly results of global warming denial among Americans. Perhaps I will have to write a piece knocking Floridian home owners when the housing markets sorts itself if coastal property values join the rise. Then again, I guess if you plan to be dead before the house gets flooded out then it doesn't really matter, right? Or does it?