Ishmael's smile and sacrifice in the resistance of Gaza

We are on the eve of a Feast of Sacrifice. The feast we will begin to observe tomorrow is the representation of the great event in which Abraham was tested with his one beloved son, and from which, by Allah's grace, he emerged proving his quality of Khalil (Friend of God), his faith and his fidelity. As of today, 253 days into the genocide in Gaza, a Ramadan, a Feast of Ramadan has passed, and now a Feast of Sacrifice too is passing.

In Gaza, close to fifty thousand people, the majority of them children and women, are being slaughtered by a raging community acting on religious feelings. The Children of Israel, who are said to have been forbidden to sacrifice humans after Abraham, as members of a religion that has also been addressed with the commandment "you shall not kill!", take people's lives in the most savage way without batting an eye and without seeing any religious objection or feeling any pang of conscience.

The interesting side of it is that the event of sacrifice is precisely one of the most important points where the difference of thought and approach between Jews and Muslims on the human being, lineage, inheritance and property comes to the fore. The most important founding conception that determines the Children of Israel's view of Muslims and other people was shaped within the event of sacrifice. Undoubtedly the Muslims' approach on this matter manifests in the exact opposite direction in the view of the event of sacrifice.

We have touched before on the divergence between Jews and Muslims over who the son to be sacrificed was. Within the Jewish and Christian tradition there is no dispute that the child to be sacrificed was Isaac. The emphasis on Isaac essentially carries a prestige, a privilege, a property, a power that being sacrificed, running to be sacrificed, and playing the leading role in the sacrifice test of Abraham, the father of faith, confers automatically. The one who is sacrificed also draws near to property and to the power of the world, because by drawing near to God he takes over the authority of God's sovereignty on earth.

In fact, in Europe's exit from the Middle Ages, the symbolic displays of the English Kingdom leaving the authority of the Pope and establishing its own sovereignty were discussed through the sacrifice-hunting parties attended by the Queen. Because of the religious meaning attached to these parties, it is said that with the sacrifices the queen offered she broke the Pope's monopoly on offering sacrifices and thus his worldly sovereignty. Let us return to this later.

It is well known that the Children of Israel have a special sensitivity about making the honor conferred by being sacrificed or offering a sacrifice belong to Isaac. But for Muslims, there is actually nothing in this honor belonging to Ishmael and Isaac that would make one more virtuous than the other. Isaac is a prophet of Allah, and so is Ishmael. Islam does not distinguish between the prophets; the cause of all of them is one, their message is one, their God is one. All of them called people not to be servants to anyone but Allah, to keep away from servitude to a servant.

Yet for the Judeo-Christian tradition Ishmael is never regarded like Isaac; indeed, in order to open a privileged-superior position to Isaac and his descendants (themselves, the Children of Israel), Ishmael is belittled and excluded as much as possible as the son of a concubine. The Holy Bible's records about the exclusion of Ishmael are, as it were, sacrificed so that Isaac can play his historical role and so that his chosenness can be reinforced. With his mother, the Egyptian black concubine Hagar, he is sent to a place far from Sarah's eyes. In the place to which he is sent he is in effect abandoned to death, as it were. In the Genesis chapter of the Holy Bible this event is told as follows:

"And the child grew, and was weaned [...] And Sarah saw the son of Hagar the Egyptian, whom she had borne to Abraham, laughing. And she said to Abraham: Cast out this bondwoman and her son; for the son of this bondwoman shall not be heir with my son Isaac" (Genesis, 21: 9-10).

As far as we know there are no clear accounts in Islamic sources of exactly how the event took place. But this account in the Holy Bible has created a categorical distinction for the Jews. The dimension of (in)justice in a newborn child being deemed deserving of so great a punishment merely because he laughed has never come onto the agenda. Yet from here, what debates a little ethical and justice concern would have raised within the Judeo-Christian tradition!

Meanwhile, Isaac took his name from his mother, who had received the glad tidings that she would give birth at the age of a hundred, laughing, taking these glad tidings as a joke. The story of the sons of Abraham is a story in which only Isaac may laugh. Yet Ishmael's laughter in this story is a transgression. Ishmael need not laugh; indeed he must never laugh. His laughter, or that of those descended from him, is an act that unnerves Israel and oversteps the limit.

The resistance that Palestinians and Gazans display today against the world's greatest armed power with means as disproportionate and unrelated as can be, and the reality they display with this resistance, seem to correspond precisely to the irony of Ishmael, to his resistance. That is why it has an infuriating effect.

Although Ishmael is Abraham's son, his mother is from a marriage of Abraham's that is not seen as legitimate. Who does not see this marriage as legitimate, and why? By what authority could Abraham's marriage to Hagar not have been seen as legitimate, Abraham who was the ancestor of faith, who lived the real test through sacrifice, and who, if there is any authority to be inherited from this, was its real owner?

The answer is in fact contained in a question, and when we get down to this answer, the only thing we see is what unjust power those who produce an excuse for racism for themselves, and through this excuse a reason for their own superiority, are after.

Was it Ishmael or Isaac who was to be sacrificed? This question in fact has no importance within the founding Islamic theology. Because Isaac is an Ishmael too. The cause of all of them was the cause of la ilaha illallah. All of them were Allah's chosen men, His prophets. Sarah and Hagar were one too. But as a response to the injustice, discrimination and racism she was subjected to, Allah honored Hagar among all women in a way granted to no one. In the finding and words of Ali Shariati, within the bounds of the Kaaba, inside the house of Allah, there is nobody. Only Hagar. Among all people only a woman, among all women a black woman, and among all black people a slave woman, Hagar lies inside the Kaaba, toward which all Muslims turn their faces as the qibla and which all pilgrims and umrah-goers circumambulate.

Let us continue this subject during the days of the feast.

May your Feast of Sacrifice be blessed. Peace upon Gaza, with those beneath the ground and those above it, its martyrs and its veterans.