Friday, May 2, 2014

Sons of Abraham, Peace be upon him

If you have followed Donna's blog - and you should have been: hers is far better than mine; you would have seen that we two Protestant Christians joined a young Colombian Catholic and a Muslim family of three from Libya and Hungary. I spent much of our 2 hour walk talking with "Faresh" (I thing that was the husband's name) about religion. Initially, he was concerned that as a westerner, I thought all Muslims were terrorists. I assured him that I knew otherwise, from my earlier life as a Baha'i (related to Islam as Christianity is to Judaism) and from my studies. He spoke of his Sunni sect of Islam and looked with some disdain at the harshly more strident Shia sect. He was very knowledgeable about his faith and was curious about mine.  Sunni do not believe that Jesus died but that He is in heaven and will someday return to lead all Muslims to Paradise.  He condemned the anger and killing in the name of religion and was interested to know that so had Jesus - even to condemning anger as equivalent to murder. So, too, he said in Islam.  I told him that Jesus had abolished the 640 Jewish laws and replaced them with just "Love God, Love man, Speak of Him to the world.". He liked that. 

When I would mention any of the holy 4 - Moses, Abraham, Jesus or Mohammed, he would interject "may peace be upon him."

We found lots in common, and I think were each surprised at what we heard from the other. Sons of Abraham indeed. I hope he contacts me through this blog or email. He has my contact info but I lack his.

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