Two mistakes in the Ibrahimi Mosque

The Ibrahimi Mosque is the fourth holiest site of Islam and is the most accessible sacred space to Palestinians in the West Bank.  It's located in Hebron, the hottest, most toxic and violent place in all of the West Bank, Israel, and, quite possibly, all of the Middle East.  Within the walls and below the floors of the Mosque lie the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and their wives.  Naturally, this is a very important Jewish site as well.

In February of 1994, an extremist Jewish settler entered into the Ibrahimi Mosque during prayer time and massacred 29 Muslim men as they prayed.

In February of 2010, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu declared his intention to designate the Ibrahimi Mosque as a Jewish Heritage Site which would close it off completely to Muslims.

As of today, a Jewish takeover of the Mosque has not occurred.  However, because of the massacre, walls were erected to separate Muslim worshipers from Jewish pilgrims.  This, accompanied by an increase of Settlements and Israeli forces, has resulted in cycles of rocks and bullets that have made this area extremely dangerous.

It was a beautiful Mediterranean late morning by the time we arrived.  As the Muslim prayer time concluded we divided into two equal-sized groups.  Half of us entered into the Muslim side while the other half entered into the Jewish side.  The first thing I noticed as I made my way through the metal detector and into the Muslim side was the large, iron green door that, on this day, stood open.

Bullet holes riddled the door that gave entrance into a place of worship.

Having entered, our women were asked to shroud themselves and we were all invited to take off our shoes.  We were entering into both a holy place and the site of a holy war.  This became real to me as I noticed an intense and hushed conversation between a Muslim tour guide the Jewish rabbi who had entered into the Muslim side with us.  A son of Ishmael and a son of Isaac were quite obviously not happy with each other.  Their irritated dialogue occurred near a silver and gold grate under which Father Abraham, the Father of many nations, the Father who had two sons, the Father who was willing to sacrifice them both, lay.

This was our first mistake: the Jewish rabbi should not have entered into the Muslim side.  He knew better, yet he entered anyway.  His entrance had provoked the Muslims within.

As their conversation subsided, we made our way to the tomb of Sarah.  This is the only shared location in the Ibrahimi Mosque: through green steel cages and a sheet of bullet-proof glass, people from the Jewish side and people from the Muslim side could both look in on the covering of her tomb at the same time.

It was here that our second mistake occurred.   The Jewish rabbi that had accompanied those on the Jewish side invited both groups to come together here for prayers of hope and peace.  It was a well intentioned move, but could easily have been interpreted as an intentional act of provocation, especially when someone from the Muslim side prayed "...in Jesus name."

Uneasy about this prayer time, I took a step back to observe what was going on around us.  The room on the Muslim side that we stood in was sparsely populated with Muslim women engaged in prayers upon our entrance.  As soon as our "prayers" began, every Muslim in the room cleared out.  Their exit did not appear to be motivated by respect for the moment of "worship" that was occurring for our group, but, rather, seemed to be motivated by our overt disrespect of their moment of worship.

Had we become settlers in our own right?  Had we just claimed territory that was not ours?

I recognized in that moment that we were much more than a learning community.  We represented either a peace-making or a peace-interrupting delegation.  That is, simply by our presence there, we were communicating something: we needed to be extremely thoughtful about what we were communicating.

While our prayers were for peace, our presence communicated quite the opposite.