Kareem from Amman, Jordan
Dear Santa,
My name is Kareem and I am eleven years old. I live in Amman, Jordan. My family is Muslim. We do not celebrate Christmas but my Christian friend Elias does and he told me about you and I thought your job sounded interesting so I am writing.
I have three questions.
Who is Jesus in Islam?
Why is the Middle East called the Middle East if it is not in the middle of anything?
Why do people fight over the same holy places?
Thank you.
Kareem Mansour
Amman, Jordan
Dear Kareem,
Your friend Elias was right to tell you about me, and you were right to write. I want to say something before I answer your questions: a Muslim boy in Amman writing to Santa Claus because his Christian friend described an interesting job is one of the finest things I have read this December, and I have read several million letters this month. That is friendship working exactly as it should. Please tell Elias I said so.
Now. Jesus in Islam.
In Islam, Jesus is known as Isa ibn Maryam — Isa, son of Mary — and he is one of the most honoured prophets in the Quran. He is mentioned by name twenty-five times, which is more than the Prophet Muhammad himself is mentioned by name. The Quran affirms the virgin birth of Jesus — that Mary conceived him miraculously, without a father, by the will of God — and describes this as one of the great signs of God's power. It affirms that Jesus performed miracles: healing the sick, giving sight to the blind, raising the dead. It describes him as the Messiah, as a word from God, and as a spirit from God — titles of extraordinary honour that no other prophet in the Quran receives in quite that combination.
Where Islam and Christianity differ is not in the honour given to Jesus but in his nature. Christians believe Jesus is the Son of God — divine, part of the Trinity, who died on the cross for the sins of humanity and rose again. Muslims believe Jesus was a great and honoured prophet and messenger of God, born miraculously and given great power, but a human prophet rather than divine. The Quran states that Jesus was not crucified, that God raised him up. Both traditions hold Jesus in profound reverence. They disagree about who he ultimately is. This disagreement is real and serious and has been debated by scholars for fourteen centuries, and I am not going to resolve it in a Christmas letter. What I will tell you is that when I fly over Bethlehem on Christmas Eve — where Jesus was born, which is less than an hour from Amman — I think about the fact that the child born in that stable is claimed with love by more than half the human beings on Earth, across two great faiths, in ways that are different and yet both full of genuine devotion. That is not nothing. That is, in fact, remarkable.
Why the Middle East is called the Middle East.
This is a geography question with an embarrassing answer, which is that the Middle East is called the Middle East because Europeans named it and they named it from the perspective of Europe. From London or Paris or Rome, the region that contains Jordan, Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and their neighbours sits to the east — and sits closer than the Far East, meaning China and Japan. So: near east is Turkey and the Levant, middle east is the Arabian Peninsula and surrounding region, far east is Asia. The naming system is entirely Eurocentric. It describes where these places are relative to Europe, not relative to anything else, and certainly not relative to themselves.
From Amman, you are not in the middle of anything in particular. You are in the western part of Asia, on the edge of the Arabian Plate, at the crossroads of ancient trade routes between Africa, Europe, and Asia, in a city built on seven hills that has been continuously inhabited for at least eight thousand years. The correct name for your region, if the world had named it from a different centre, might be something like the Western Asian Crossroads, or the Ancient Fertile Corridor, or simply the Place Where Civilisation Kept Starting. The name Middle East is what stuck because the people who drew the maps at the relevant moment in history were standing in Europe. This is a limitation of the name, not of the place. The place is extraordinary.
Why people fight over the same holy places.
Kareem, you are eleven years old and you are asking the question that diplomats, theologians, historians, and world leaders have been unable to fully answer for centuries. I will tell you what I know.
People fight over holy places because holy places carry the weight of identity, history, and meaning all at once. Jerusalem, which is two hours from your home, is sacred to three faiths: it is where the Temple of Solomon stood, the holiest site in Judaism. It is where Jesus was crucified, buried, and, Christians believe, rose again. It is where the Prophet Muhammad, Muslims believe, ascended to heaven on the Night Journey. The same stones, the same hills, the same city — carrying all of that meaning simultaneously, for peoples who have each loved that place for thousands of years and whose love for it is not pretended but real and deep and tied to everything they believe about God and history and who they are.
When meaning is that concentrated in one place, and when the peoples carrying that meaning have also experienced war and displacement and loss and fear, the holy place becomes the point where all of that pain and all of that love arrive at the same time. This is why it is so hard. It is not simply greed or politics, though greed and politics make everything worse. It is that the place means something true and important to people who are each telling the truth about what it means to them, and the truths are in conflict, and nobody has yet found a way to hold all of them at once that everyone can accept.
I fly over Jerusalem every Christmas Eve. I have done so for a very long time. The city from the air is beautiful and ancient and lit by something that is not entirely explained by the streetlights. I do not have a solution to what happens on the ground. What I have is the long view, and the long view tells me this: the children of Jerusalem — Jewish children, Christian children, Muslim children — write letters that sound more like each other than they sound different. They want to be safe. They want their families to be well. They want the world to be fair. They want things to be better. Kareem, you and Elias, a Muslim and a Christian in Amman who are simply friends, who tell each other about interesting jobs and write letters to the same address — you are already the answer, even if the world has not caught up to you yet.
Merry Christmas, Kareem. Eid Mubarak when the time comes. Thank you for writing. The North Pole is honoured by the question.
Your friend,
Santa Claus
The North Pole
P.S. You did not send a wish list. If you would like to send one, the address is open. If you would prefer not to, that is also fine. The letter was already a gift. https://santaclaus.top/jesus-in-islam/
Comments
Post a Comment