BONUS EPISODE: Live Event Audio

This is the audio from our November 2025 launch event we held with LABA at Künstlerhaus Bethanien in Berlin. 

You'll hear panelists Yael Attia and Muhammad Jabali talk with Matan, Ben, and producer Guli about the central consequences and critiques of the BAD COUSINS framework. 

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Transcript

SPEAKER_07 0:03

Hello and welcome to Bad Cousins. I'm Ben Schumann Stoller. We finished the season a couple weeks ago, but we have a little bit of bonus content. We have some audio from the launch event that we held all the way back in November at Kunstarhaus Batannian. We had a launch event to launch the podcast. We did it in collaboration with Laba. In terms of timing, I think it's important context to remember that back then in November a ceasefire had just been declared in Gaza, and this is still a good few months before the Iran War. In terms of the audience context, this was after we had released episode one, but before all the other episodes had been released. And as you'll hear, we had a little panel. So there was Ghouli, Matan, and me, and then there was Muhammad Jabali, a writer and artist, and Yael Atia, a scholar here in Germany, in Berlin. And uh you'll hear Ghuly introduce the evening, and then each panelist give their talk for a couple minutes, and then the audience asks some questions. We had a little discussion. So again, thanks so much for listening to Bad Cousins, for being with us through the season. We hope to have more stuff for you through the year. Uh you can reach out to us, there's contact info in the show notes. But in the meantime, enjoy.

SPEAKER_10 1:19

Okay, so once again, thank you everyone for coming. Yeah. We started working on this podcast in a very difficult situation to say the very least. We've been working on it, I think, more than a year now, which means that we've started exploring the notion of the Abrahamic relations between Judaism and Islam against the backdrop of the horrible genocide in Gaza, and which of course uh gave a whole new layer of meaning or some kind of a political urgency to this project. Although it's important to say that we don't aim to have very clear answers for I don't know, uh policy questions or for the immediate uh realpolitik uh things on the ground. We rather chose to create this podcast as a room for discussion, as an invitation for dialogue, and as a way to reflect uh together on how does the framing of the relations between Jews and Muslims as cousins, how does the framing of uh the relations between Judaism and Islam, or if you want Jews and Arabs as uh descendants of the same mythical father, namely Abraham, how does this mode of thinking influences contemporary politics? How does this hinges on um the alliances today? I mean, it's of course the the most obvious example of it is the Abraham Accords that we're gonna speak about. But the way we treat this this notion of Abraham is twofold. On the one hand, we ask ourselves what kind of oppressive uh traits does it have, why does this or how this does this religious patriarchal framing uh prevents certain kinds of solidarity and alliance making, but on the other side we try to explore which potential, which redemptive or positive potential can we draw from the notion of Abraham. Uh but before we do that, I just want to say that this event is a collaboration between quite a lot of people and organizations. So, first of all, I want to thank Columedia for producing uh this podcast. I want to thank uh the diaspores, which are media partners, and of course, I want to thank uh Labamaraya, which is the program I'm a member of, and Kunstlaus Betanin, which is where we are. And first, I'm gonna quickly present all the people who are here in this wonderful panel. First of all, we have uh Ben Schumann Stoller. Ben is the founder of Colummedia based in Berlin. Then we have Matan Kaminel, which is a lecturer at the Queen Mary University in London, and uh yeah, long uh-time activist in the Israeli radical left. Then uh we have Muhammad Jabali, who is an author and an artist. His latest publication is the Entrapment of a Place, a Palestinian Reading in Israeli Fine Art. And then last but not least, we have Yaelatiya, who is a Jewish studies scholar working in the field of modern Jewish thought. She's a research assistant in the Department for Comparative Theology at the University of Paderborn, and she also teaches as part of Labba. Thank you, and I think now I'm gonna hand it over to Matan.

SPEAKER_02 4:40

Good evening. Thank you, everybody, for being here. Thank you, Guri, for the wonderful introduction. Uh, I'm not going to speak very long now, I just tell you what we're about to do. Both Chibali and Yael have listened to, I think, uh, the first episode of the show, and we asked them to reflect in in their own words and as and where the subject takes them on what do you think about the Abrahamic framing of the Abraham Accords? Uh have you have your thoughts changed since uh um interacting with this show? Also, I mean we the the we really would like you to reflect, or we'd like to reflect maybe all of us together, on this question that Dana raises, which is whether any of this can actually lead to anything positive. And if so, or if not, what should be our uh as progressives, as left as leftists, or um as people who want to see peace and justice in the region, uh what should our what should our uh our attitude be towards all these sort of mythological backgrounds that we see propping up, I think also in other contexts uh during the the recent genocide and during just call kind of all over the the politics of the field. So we've asked each one of you to speak about 10 minutes, and then maybe we'll respond very, very quickly, and then we'll also have a discussion you uh with with you with the audience, and then we can go back to to mingling and drinking more of this wonderful beer. So we're starting with Yael, right? Okay, please.

SPEAKER_03 5:56

Um okay, so uh I will do or my short contribution would have three points. The first will basically offer another framework or a competing framework to the framework of uh the Abrahamic or Abrahamism. The second will explain why I need I think we need to maybe think of another framework and basically be more critical uh in the line of Danael Kud to the whole Abrahamic uh framework. And in the third, I will try nonetheless to see how we can think positively together with Abraham. Um forgive me for reading. Uh I'm just you know that's how we do it in academia. Uh so I'm just gonna read. Okay. The first point, the Semites. In recent years, we have witnessed intellectual and political efforts, most notably by scholars such as Gil Hochberg and Gil Anidjar, relevant for me because they are like in the fringes of Jewish studies. And in their attempt, they with the Semites, they kind of intem to reinvoke and repurpose the concepts of the Semites. Much like your own attempt to rethink the Abrahamic or Abrahamism, these projects aim to challenge frameworks that have long reinforced religious and cultural antagonisms and divisions. Of course, as we know, the political backdrop of this is the situation in Israel-Palestine, and not only, but also the kind of discourse that naturalizes or essentializes the enmity between Israelis and Palestinians and by extension the tensions between Jews and Muslims worldwide. So in these narratives, the essentializing narratives, the political conflict in Palestine is often invoked to suggest an ancient theological conflict or a theological political conflict. Moreover, in that political background, amid the growing separation between anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and especially in discursive contexts where Muslims or Arabs are portrayed as embodying a new anti-Semitism, as we see especially here in the context of Germany, these efforts to bring the Arab and the Jew together under the category of the Semites seek not only to foster unity instead of enmity, but also, and this is what I believe is the politically useful in that effort, to expose the West's continued complicity in this enduring and tragic drama. So, just to shed some light on that, who are the Semites? So the category emerged in the writings of European thinkers of the 19th and 18th centuries, most importantly the philologist Ernst Renan. And Semitism was then first introduced as a linguistic classification, but soon expended to signify to basically signify a broader set of cultural, religious, and pseudo-racial traits that were interchangeably attributed to Jews, Arabs, and Muslims. By the mid-19th century, the term Semites gained popularity and served to reaffirm European cultural supremacy without a recourse to overt racial anatomy, basically transforming linguistic difference into a more refined form of racism. Today, the idea of returning to, or as it is often called, remembering the Semites is not about reviving a colonial term, of course, but about exposing how this concept historically linked anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, and how these intertwined legacies of inclusion and exclusion continue to shape relations between Jews and Muslims in the Middle East and in Europe, and of course, how the West is part of it. So before I move to the second point, I think the centrality for me is the question about where does the West appear in the Abraham, right? Like, is it only vis-à-vis the Jew that the Christian then appear? Because there is no other connection to the patriarch Abraham. So let's have that question. But let's um continue with what is important for me from the Semites, the effort to basically show the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion. So the second point Abrahamism or the story of Abraham. Ben, um in the podcast you ask, how can a peace agreement lead to war? Basically indicating the self-contradiction. But if we think about it through the figure of Abraham, as you invite us to do, then the contradiction becomes even more intriguing. I must admit, you asked in the questions, that I hadn't initially thought of Abraham when I heard the name of the Accords, the Abraham Accords. But now, after listening to the podcast and preparing for this evening, the idea of assigning the name Abraham to a supposed peace agreement that then leads to a war makes sense to me, and I will now try to explain why. By invoking Abraham here, it might not be so surprising that something meant to bring peace instead gives rise to war or even wars in plural. As we know, the figure of Abraham and his life story is marked by tension. But much like in the case of the Semites, the problem lies not only in the figure or the story itself, but also in the long-lasting narratives attached to it. But let's keep that narrative aside for a minute, because those are, you know, hermeneutics and interpretations. Let's go to the story itself. Let's see what the story itself reveals. What do we have in the story of Abraham in Genesis? And I'm not going to talk about everything because there's so many things in the story of Abraham. I'm going to talk about the examples that are linked specifically to the drama of the cousins, to Isaac and Ishmael. So, where does the story begin? Let's go back to the beginning, to Genesis. We have in the beginning Sarai and/or Sarah afterwards, who cannot bear children, and gives her maid Hagar to Abraham, so that she can bear a child to Abraham instead of her. As she tells Abraham, consort with my maid, perhaps I shall have a child through her. So instead of her and through her. When Agar then gives birth to Ishmael, Sarah realizes that she was lowered in the esteem of her maid. I'm quoting from Genesis, but doesn't matter from where exactly, but just let you know. And therefore treated her harshly, and she, Hagar, ran away from her. Agar was then found in the wilderness by a messenger of God who told her, Go back to your mistress and submit to her harsh treatment. Then, when Sarah finally gives birth to Isaac, she demands that Abraham send Agar and Ishmael away. For the son of that slave shall not share in the inheritance with my son Isaac. And then, of course, there is the story of the binding of Isaac, where God asks Abraham to take your son, your favorite one, Isaac, whom you love, and go to the land of Moria and offer him there as a burnt offering on one of the heights that I will point you, point out to you. Abraham agrees to the demand, no questions asked. And then, as Abraham picked up the knife to slay his son, a messenger of God stopped him. And he already had it going for him. He was stopped. He could have stopped, he said, you proved us that you're obeying. But then Abraham decides, when he looked up, his eye fell upon a ram caught in the thicket by its horns. So Abraham went and took the ram and offered it up as a burnt offering in place of his son. So what we find in the story of Abraham, I want to suggest, and again, not only in the figure himself, but in the narrative surrounding the creation of the myth of the cousins, Isaac and Ishmael, is a logic of substitution, submission, and sacrifice, whether of oneself, if we think about Sarah, or of others if we think we think about Isaac. In that regard, the Abrahamic drama is already a drama of inclusion and exclusion. And therefore, not entirely surprising to think of the Abrahamic Courts as an affair that, in one way or another, excluded the Palestinians, as they were not part of the thinking and the framing of it, or in harsher terms, sacrificed the Palestinian issue with the idea to normalize the relationship with Israel on the expense of the Palestinians. So so far I agree with the Abrahamic framing of your podcast and endeavor. But nonetheless, you are inviting us to think about progressive Abrahamism and how it could potentially look like, drawing on the story of Abraham. And I have two points to that. So the first will be the connection between Abraham and hospitality, often called the hospitality of Abraham, which originates in Genesis 18 when he sees three strangers, he's inviting them to his home, he's giving them food, he doesn't even ask who they are. And that leads rabbis in the Babylonian Talmud in Tractate Shabbat to say that greater is hospitality than receiving the divine presence, even. And that led to a whole tradition from Derrida on, or even from Levinas before, which is also the theory that I'm working with, of thinking about hospitality as a political term, thinking about hospitality in relation to migration regimes or to the foreigner or the stranger in general, and the idea of the Rida that we must always, we must real like or radical hospitality is the one that basically makes the whole difference between the guest and the host to not matter. It renders completely indifferent because the whole the whole position of the two change and mix, and that is actually what radical hospitality is. So that could be basically attributed to the whole story of Abraham as well. And the second, and here I want to offer Immanuel Levinas's reading of Abraham, which for Levinas, Abraham represents the kind of human subject who responds to the call of the other before knowing or understanding it. So kind of radical responsibility. It is a call that precedes freedom, knowledge, or choice. In this way, Abraham becomes the figure of ethical obedience, not in a sense of blind submission, but as the one who is called into responsibility by the infinite demand of the other. So I think that if we could get from the story with two concepts, one of hospitality and the other one of responsibility, we maybe already have enough. Join the Palestinians join the Palestinian. And unfortunately, not unfortunately, that is what it is. I am both Orthodox in my background and Mizrahi, and I just see my cousins, apropos cousins, become more and more messianic. And my fear is that when I'm trying to do this kind of Jewish studies, hermanoitics on the text, I have an armanoid distance of kind of a suspension, or they are really close to the text. Like for them, Armageddon is Armageddon. Like, you know, I could do Armageddon and try to, you know, offer some good, you know, um, Deridian readings of it. But I but I always have some sort of a hermanoidal distance um to the original text, which is also a text of authority uh and a normative text. And this is just a concern that I wanted to share. So thank you very much for this.

SPEAKER_06 18:31

Okay, so I don't have a written text, so we could uh have a variety of performances. So uh I'm just gonna comment on some notes that I wrote. Now one of the things in the episode that and the question the um guiding questions was the question of like in some sort that the Abrahamic record or calling the accords as in this name is some fundamental or religious reading into what is the conflict is, and then this as usual puts some other Western progressive group as having no theology or non-participants in the in the religious conflict. So it's like embedded in the what are we asking, which is like seems uh bursting into some open door, it's like because there is like the podcast, the framing, whatever brings into this imagination that there exist some Western liberal uh humans that are not part of the theological discussion, which is I think is the main problem and one of the main problems in the Palestinian Israeli conflict, because the true believers are the believers of the only democracy in the Middle East. This is the most fundamental religious belief that makes the conflict perpetual, and it does have the belief in the Kingdom of Israel, because any other project would have been judged without the fascination, without the religious fascination, which is the Christian Zionist fascination of creating the end of times. So liberal Democrats in the West could not, at any moment, even now, during two years of genocide, could not see material without the glasses of their redemption story. So the main main like we we could have seen that uh how the Democrats behaved, yeah, during the last two years and before regarding the material, you know, like uh Realpolitik, Abrahamic Accords, we could say that in September, before October 2023, uh Biden just affirmed the plans to open the India Europe trade route, and all the time, even during like such a screaming historical moment, no one in the democratic like liberal mainstream of Western Christendom, no one rejected his belief that the interior Israeli voting mechanism. I don't want even to call it a democracy. Is a democratic thing that could lead to justice and liberal like the expectation that the Israelis by their will will be good and throw their privileges and throw their, you know, like the main existence of Israelis is a state project. So it's like even the family relationship created is a Zionist project, it's not only an ideology. And and to expect that all of this will dissolve by the will of the Israelis in their own democratic process, it is religious. Yeah. It is such a such fundamentally religious. And I would claim, like I in my opinion, it does have a lot to do with the Christian Zionist fascination of Protestant Europe. Now this is like mentioning Hochbat, Gil Najar, others, also Palestinian scholars. Christian Zionism, if you take the Jews out of the Zionist lobby, there will still be a majority for the annexing of the West Bank. Like the Zionist lobby exists regardless of the Zionist movement inside the Jewish society. This is like one remark. So I think this is the religious fundamentalism to be like also to be addressed. Now, the Abrahamic Accords also like we could see other layers of Christian imagination in it, which exactly what Yael mentioned, of imagining anyone who prays as a Jew as a Semite. So it's like it's the lack of the ability to imagine Europeans or white people in general that are non-Christians. This is also part of creating. So I would say the Abrahamic Accords is a Trump project in the meaning that it nails the last nail in the coffin of the claim that the European Jewish Zionist movement has nothing to do with what the hell are we reading this biblical relation to Israel through this old text. So it does create that, yes, this is uh the Israeli project is the project of the Jews no matter of their descendant, because again, we can't have, there is no possibility to have people believing in Judaism. Judaism is it's like uh you know like uh poor people, they have been born into this. It's not something that no no uh like no rational human being would have chose this. It's like so the only way to excuse them and not to do the Holocaust, etc. No no no no no no is to say poor people, they they have been born into this. So this is uh like a very Western Christendom way to get out of the internal uh uh uh contradiction there. Which which brings me to the another point is that it's the same imagination that is trying since the beginning of the Zionist movement to deny that Palestinians also see themselves as the continuation of the Kingdom of Solomon. We are the sons and daughters of the kingdom of David. So claiming that the sons and daughters of the descendants of the kingdom of David should return to their land while performing an ethnic cleansing project is basically turning the conflict since the beginning into a religious one. In Arabic you would say in Hebrew you would say meshber imuni. In Arabic you would say aqa'idi. I don't know what will be the um like the right term in uh yeah but faith doesn't even like hold it. It's a matter of like basics of uh belief, not even faith. In Arabic, it's uh it it turns the question into a question of belief, yeah? Because if descendant of the kingdom of David through the hundreds and hundreds of thousands of years that passed, some became Christian and Muslims and lived in the area as Muslims, they are not seen as part of the king. While a European Jew that just as we saw, as we talked before about the imagination that a poor guy, he probably didn't like become a Jew, he probably came from there, he is the one that has the right to return and kick the others out. So it is a matter of holders of the right belief by the Christian Zionist imagination that should inhabit the land. It's not about the descendants of Abraham or the descendants of David or the descendants of Solomon. And by the way, in in in Palestinian imagination, it's it's Solomon's temple, yeah? It's not David's temple. So even that is a way of uh like the main question, like this accords or calling them in this imagination, it does keep the question of not accepting that the temple is there built on the mount. Yeah? So it's like in in any regional Abrahamic belief that accepts the continuation of the area, the temple is there on the mount. It's called the Doom of the Rock, it's Al-Aqsa, it's Al-Haram Sharif, it's a continuation of the Temple of Solomon. Now coming and wanting to, like in invoking all of this religious imagination, and then looking very calmly and saying, but we it it it was just a rational modernist project. Why are they so irrational acting in a religious sense? Why are you so angry and acting religiously? You know? It's like this is like the whole uh 100 years of of dynamic in this conflict. It's all the time the Muslims are the ones who are acting irrationally and religiously. While it's just, you know, like it's just like as uh many it's like uh if if you wear a suit and if you wear secular, if you look secular, then you are secular. Like the whole of Europe, seculars just by their drinks, uh, eats, uh, food and wear. Not by the question if they participate in any religious activity or by no. And this is how the Muslim world is seen. It's like the first religious project invoked in the Middle East was a Western project. It wasn't even a Middle Eastern project. And like the Abrahamic Accord or this way of talking about the subject, again, it's like trying to reduce, like first, it's like putting nails in the Western imagination of the conflict, continuing the main myths of who are the Jews, who is returning, who has the political right, etc. etc. etc. without dealing with accepting the area's imagination of the continuation of the story. And since we could talk forever, we will end here.

SPEAKER_02 30:22

Okay, I'm going to try to speak very quickly because I want to have some time for discussion as well. So just maybe two points. Um the first, and I think this is really picking up from what Jabali was just saying, is that I think in the uh one of the in the in the dominant or the hegemonic reading of the Abraham Accords, in Israel, in the West, and I think in the in the Gulf as well, something that is implicit in as the moral of the story is what the the Qahanists, the extreme right-wing uh um religion religious radicals in Israel callkat Ishmael Leshemtikuno. The distancing of Isaac of Ishmael, the distancing of Ishmael for his correction. So, what is according to this theology the problem with the Arabs, the sons of Ishmael? The fact that they think that they have the right to the land. Ishmael is the son of Abraham, and his children are the grandchildren of Abraham. This is in the this is in the canon of the Jewish tradition, so they can't they can't deny that. What they can say is what needs to happen in order for the redemption to occur is that they need to understand their subordinate position, that they're that their father was not the chosen one, and that this land does not belong to them. Maybe some of them can stay, as Smoltwich says, maybe some of them can stay if they accept what Kahana says are the two conditions, which is paying a special tax and slavery. The first one sounds uh, the second one's uh okay, you know. And and and I think this is this is very this jibes very well with the so-called secularized, but actually very deeply religious Western imaginary of ethnic homogeneity, of the fact that every country has one people that it belongs to and that it needs to belong to, and that, and we've seen this in in several waves of extreme violence after World War I, after World War II, the ethnic homogenization is a deeply theological, though denied, logic that is within Western nationalism writ large, and was uh imposed on the Middle East in very violent ways, including also including the expulsion of the Mizrahi Jews from their countries or their forced immigration to Israel. So that's one side of it. And the other side, I think, is where we can do maybe a more sort of um uh subversive reading of the story is by starting with Hagar or Haja, whose name means migration. Right? And with starting with the names of the two peoples, Arabs, Arab, and uh Ivri, Hebrew, which are both terms which refer to movement, right? Hebrew is from avar to pass, and Arav means to mix. I'm playing a little bit with the etymology, but these are these are these are legitimate etymologies among among many other ones. So within the story, and Hagar is a central figure in this story, and I don't think I'm not I'm not being very original when I say this, and this is the Jewish tradition, especially the Islamic tradition, says this. She is the one who speaks directly to God there. She is the only person in the Hebrew Bible who gives God a name, who decides to give God a name. She calls him Elohi, right? The God who has seen me. Various miracles are done to her. Um and these miracles are are directly related to her objection, sorry to use the academic jargon, to her being the most suffering, the longest suffering, the most oppressed figure in the story, right? She sees God and she sees and she and she has these miracles done to her and to her son after having these crimes done to her by her mistress and her and her master. And so, again, I don't have this is there's nothing original about this. This is something that has been done by various thinkers, including a Haredi uh anti-Zionist thinker named Rabbi Yosef Kamener, who is no relation of mine, but he's an interesting guy, and by various uh um Islamic feminists, uh uh, etc. etc. This idea of the holiness of movement and of the sanctity of uh of migration and of refugeedum and of peregrination, pilgrimage, all these, and Abraham, of course, and the entire family is a family of migrants. And and and two generations later, of course, the family migrates to Egypt and and is enslaved in Egypt, and and and the story of Exodus, which is you know the kind of the Ural story of liberation from slavery in the Western tradition, also emerges from that. So I think these are some points that we can pick up on if we want to ask where are the sort of uh um um subversive and and possibly liberatory kind of uh elements in the story.

SPEAKER_09 34:45

Yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_08 34:49

I'm more interested in the the chatting. But for me, the the first project that I did was Dig Where You Stand, which was about taking an idea that was that maybe is obvious, maybe is not obvious. The more you look at it, you start to be the deeper you go into it, the more uh upsetting it is and the more connecting it is to broader and wider political topics. And it was about human remains in Berlin museums. And we're gonna keep building on that. And this was the same thing. It's very simple. Like it seems very obvious, and I hope the audio captured that. That people immediately, when you went up and spoke to them, immediately got it. Um there is like a kind of immediacy to, oh yeah, Abraham, okay, cousins. But then it's like, so what? If that has no impact then while a genocide is happening, or while things feel stuck in the same conversations, in the same ideas, then what I would love to talk about or hear more about is how can it make any difference at all. Otherwise, we're wasting our time. And and my hope and my belief is that it can't. But I would love to hear from people and the rest of you also again of how that could be possible.

SPEAKER_10 35:56

But maybe before I just want to offer one uh distinguishment or uh like a double distinguishment. First of all, uh there is a difference between the notion of uh Semitic people, which was an old term uh used to discuss both Arabs and Jews, or Muslim and Jews. Of course, there is a difference between Arabs and Muslims, of course, but for the sake of this discussion, like those terms have been conflated. So the Semitic notion is one thing, the Abrahamic notion is another thing, and as we discuss, I think on the third episode of our podcast, actually the term Abrahamic or Abrahamic religions gained uh popularity only in the 60s, following a Catholic convention called Vatican II, where basically the Pope understood that his uh biggest enemy or like the biggest enemy of the Catholic Church is no longer other religions, is no longer Islam, uh, but rather communism. So he basically said something like, okay, we're gonna create like an Abrahamic alliance, we're gonna be friends with the Muslims and the Jews to fight uh the devil of uh Marxist secularity. So that's one thing we should keep in mind that that all the terms we're you we're using are like political and uh like Abrahamic. Uh the notion of Abrahamic has a very clear anti-Marxist uh history to it. And the second distinguishment, I think it's important before we open it up to questions because it talks to both of what you said basically, is that the notion of uh Abraham is twofold. On the one side, the notion of Abraham is a notion of faith, of a notion of or a notion of belief. So according to this reading, every Christian living in the US or in uh Sweden or every Muslim living in Indonesia is uh Abrahamic because he follows an Abrahamic religion. And the other notion of Abraham or of Abrahamic uh affiliation is a much more strict one, and this is the notion of lineage, this is the notion of being the descendant of Abraham. And under this reading, only the Jews and the Arabs are considered true descendants of Abraham, not the Protestants in the US. Actually, the Abraham Accords were signed twice. Uh, and one time uh the notion of Abraham there is reiterated as Abrahamic religions, so the Abrahamic Accords are considered as peace treaties between the Abrahamic religions, and in the second uh document of the Arabic religions, we see a completely different understanding of Abraham as the forefather of both Palestinian uh of both Arabs and the Israelis. The notion of Abraham is used not to create peace between um Muslims, Christians, and Jews, but rather only between Arabs and Israelis. So that's another thing we need to tackle. Like who do who do we speak about when we speak about Abrahamic relations or lineage? And hopefully that could guide your comments and hopefully it would yeah, encourage you to listen to the podcast. So maybe we pick a few questions. Maybe we'll pick like three or four and then we answer all of them together.

SPEAKER_01 39:04

Thank you. Um I would like to make a comment. Um sorry. Uh but uh I think like um I appreciate the intellectual experiment of like thinking through these conceptions that were bestowed upon us from Ma-Lago and uh you know Riyadh. But I think like what is more urgent is in a sense to understand what is the new Middle East that is now built through this overarching Abrahamic concept, which connects Trumpism, uh, you know, like a very obnoxious form of international capitalism, the awful dictatorships uh that are much more influential than they were before in the Gulf, and at the same time the complete demise of Arab nationalism, the mukawama, uh or the resistance axis, liberal Zionism, and like any secular uh uh project within our region, like our region, I mean the Middle East. And in this regard, I think that we are now facing the threat of the Abrahamic conception, and there is no externality to it right now. There is no way to think outside of it. But then I I so so so that obviously leads to the great question that you asked. So, how can we use it in a progressive way? But I think this is a bit of, you know, I think this is maybe maybe jumping ahead too quickly because we still need to understand what's this new oppressive structure that is now thinking in, I don't know where, in Florida or in Qatar, about how to rebuild Gaza as a Riviera with no Palestinians or something like that. So I think we we first need to understand that we are inside the Abrahamic structure and that there is no really critical way of understanding it and b besides like the tools that we already have, which are very weak but are still like you know quite good to analyze.

SPEAKER_00 41:10

Thank you. So um as a uh atheist, uh uneducated simpleton, uh my reading of the situation is that there's a kind of a double duplicity of the Abrahamic framing. One is that it's a sort of a cover for the hegemonic realpolitik dynamic that is actually governing the situation um that we're that we're in, and particularly the situation of the Abrahamic courts themselves. Um and then the second layer of the of the duplicitousness is that the religious historical framing of the situation uh of the story is actually something that the people on either side would care about in the same way that we're all aware of historical, religious, ethnic framings uh affecting or being weaponized in all around the world to affect politics that we don't see as being the right solution to the problems that we find ourselves in now. So, my question to the panel is to what extent am I overlooking uh real material impact of the um theological uh aspects here? So, to what material aspects do theology actually play here that I'm unaware of?

SPEAKER_10 42:34

Is there any other question before we do the first round of answers?

SPEAKER_05 42:39

Is anyone there's not a great question if you just be a critical No no it's a question, but um But I think that some of the people addressed it a little bit, but I just wonder whether, you know, we're talking about Abraham Accords and Abraham and slightly debunking a bit the myths of uh Abraham or like questioning that. But I wonder, as some others have said, like, do we think that these are the myths that we should be focusing on? Like, don't we think there are other more operative myths about the only democracy in the Middle East or about what like you know, that that could be more urgent for the situation um well maybe it's it's a question maybe to uh uh to Jabali.

SPEAKER_04 43:43

I think I I think I I really agree with what you said that uh about this uh one of the main points is disposing of a Christian perspective as outside the conflict, which it actually completely uh uh covers off or the covers off its its its cardinal play. But you focused also on the fascination with democracy and the only democracy in the listen. I'm wondering if not part of what is happening in the Abraham Accord is a willingness, both in Israel and maybe in the United States, like to say democracy, like maybe we can be more like uh uh the Emirates in Saudi Arabia, and that's fine because there are very, as you say in the podcast, there are very obvious similarities between the the uh these countries uh uh and their yeah their regimes.

SPEAKER_02 44:37

I mean I could start if if nobody else wants to. I think all the questions are kind of the same question in a way, which is legitimate. And what I would say is that I think maybe we start where we start off wrong is by sort of presuming in advance that we know what the difference between the religious and the secular is. And this is going to sound like a lot like people that I really hated reading when I was in university. It's kind of like a um very sort of uh uh post-secularist uh kind of understanding, but in a way I think I've come round. And this is again very closely related to what Jabali was saying about whenever you think of yourself as outside of the story, then you're already making a mistake. I think Lacan also said something related to like this, right? Anyone who thinks that they're not being duped is is the one being duped the most. And I think maybe all of us in this room to some extent, all of us who have spoken in any case, insofar as we see as ours ourselves as secular, insofar as we see as ourselves as standing outside of this discourse, then we're already sort of making a mistake. And I'm not seeing myself outside of this. Okay.

SPEAKER_06 45:51

Okay, good. Well, why generalization? Like we didn't do a survey, but I mean, you know, you see, there is the assumption that it's like if you're a rational human being in this room, yeah, then you're outside of this discourse.

SPEAKER_02 46:05

Exactly. And it's a mistake. And it's a mistake. So, I mean, I'm not uh I'll speak for myself. I won't speak for anybody else. I don't feel that I've overcome that that feeling of externality. And this project is maybe is is is is is in a way about trying to overcome that feeling. Um we tend to think to to turn it into a question of belief, and I think what you were saying about the question of belief is is very central here, is that these stories work through us whether we think we believe in them or not. And those of us who think we don't believe in them are the ones who are who are who are making that mistake most of all. So just to be to be less abstract about it, the myth of Israel as the social as the only democracy in the Middle East is directly related to the Abrahamic myth. And I think Jabali was trying to say this, and I totally agree. The idea that it's only Jews who have the right to participate in the political community in Israel, that the Palestinians still living in the country, after theory, the Palestinians who have been expelled from the country don't have a right. This is embedded in the idea of the only democracy, right? Insofar as the Israeli regime is very similar to the Gulf regimes, it's in this respect that in those countries, 70, 80% of the population is just written out of the story, right? The migrants who are mostly coming from outside of the region, but were uh Palestinian migrants in in these places before, are just not part of the story. And making these sorts of exclusions is predicated on these very uh they're they're they're modernly transformed, but they are ancient uh ideas of family and of having responsibilities only to those who are inside your family. And I think the Abraham story also has it also can it also contains it also contains the the hospitality issue and the and the and the and the role of Hagar undermine they undermine that. Um so that those are where I I start looking for for answers within the story. Sorry, that was a little too long.

SPEAKER_03 48:10

Um so the post-seculars, um about that. I think that there is a different thing to say, like I think that there is a different thing to say, um, oh, when you think that you're secular, you think that you're out of that order. And and the idea of the you know the post-secular is to basically say, no, no, you thought that you're modern and that you're secular and all that, but actually religion also still captivates everyone and it's still operating, and we need to understand it. But the understanding it doesn't mean also necessarily like you know, giving answers from within that order, precisely that order. So I think that one could say something about hospitality, but not necessarily democracy. So democracy would be part of a different order than you know, thinking of hospitality from the from the like the story of Abraham. And I think generally what we are doing here, and something you asked in the question, like in the questions you sent us, which I liked, you asked, does like do we need as progressive uh you know left-wingers to think about political imaginaries, or do we need to think about you know materialities like violence and economies? And I'm like, let's think about violence and economies. And why? Is because I think that what we are doing here is nice, like it's interesting, it's something that we we we we participate in cultural criticism. And I'm not, it's not my point, I take it from David Scott. What happens with cultural criticism where you go back to the original story and you question, you know, the the propositions and you know the gender, the pull the cultural, there is in a way a suspension of the political. And a suspension of the question of how does the Middle East look now, or what is the question of violence or of materialities. And I think we need to have those, but not only, or like to balance that. And I think that in the understanding that the the the the that religion matters doesn't mean that we need to give answers from that rhythm but to go back to politics. So that's uh my point.

SPEAKER_06 50:04

Um like first I would say that my comments on the progressives or the democrats was regarding the previous era of history. We might be seeing seeing the end of liberal democracy. I was just reflecting that even when the ground on which we were ethically questioning each other was the liberal democracy, the theological belief was still very uh uh uh very strong. So it's like I'm saying Palestinian-wise moving from that uh uh theological belief into this theological belief. Like we were sacrificed back then, we were sacrificed now. It's like regardless of the framing, you know. So it's like this was my comment that I and I think it is crucial in the meaning of liberals, like I think it does have even a something with how do we answer the era that we are stepping in, yeah? To stop thinking that we are not part of the theological uh debate. This is like I think we should stop thinking that we are outside of it. I don't think we lose materiality there. Um the real question, like that's why I when when Ben was talking a minute ago, like I was just thinking, it's like, but are we interested in the accords themselves or why are they called Abrahamic? It's like I don't the fuck care why they are called Abrahamic, it's the accord themselves. It's like it's like we should we should deal with the accords. Like thinking why uh some uh Western imagination keeps calling them Abrahamic, or like that's why I think the kingdom of David or Solomon or what is built on the mount, this is a material question. Abraham as a like who the fuck cares? It's like uh he's like very down like his influence on the real happening is is is minor. Uh while the real thing the the material theological question is why do the West look at the mountain and doesn't see the temple? This is how I would frame it. It's like history of photography and stuff. I could send you many photographic, you know, it's not by chance that the beginning of photography has a very high connection to Palestine, blah blah blah, whatever. This is an art talk. Some of the photo books that were distributed in the United States with best sellers in the early 20th century. Taking a photo of a dirt road, up Silwan into their troad. You see nothing in the photo, it's it's just a mountain. This is surely how Jesus Christ entered the city of Jerusalem. It's like, how the fuck did you know that? And then they go to the Il Aqsa, presumably this is where it's like you just took a photo of uh uh a dearth road, and you claimed in the in the caption, surely Jesus Christ walked this hill in his entrance. And then you're talking about a thousand, five hundred years tradition of doing this, this is the temple of Solomon, and saying, presumably, and this is how 100 years of of of history, of art, of democracy, like this is, like it has a lot to do with the imagination that was created in the West, and how all of this was created, like it it you look at the mountain, why don't you see the temple? Like you know, like this is the crazy question that I think is is is very materialic. Like this is a very related question because the question is Israel was all the time a bath country, it's a general-ruled country that has an ideology. Zionism, you can't be part of the political discussion if you don't belong to the right fractions of the Zionist uh party. No one, there was no margin of politics in Israel, never outside of the Bath Zionism uh party lines. Um and it is so in in many cases, Israel was a Middle Eastern country in in like in in man in many aspects all the time. It's just the West saw it as a democracy. And so what's forming now the relationship between the Gulf and Israel, this is not uh it's not what's new in this. And again, here like you could talk about that difference of imagining Il-Qods and why do uh Gulf countries have less relation to Il-Aqsa question. This also, like you have, you could read in Arabic theological discussions and historical debates, it it does have a thing, huh? Like you could add to your episode Abdullah ibn Zubair, Abdul Malikim Number One, their political conflict, the debate about Isl-Isra'an al-Mah'aj uh surah is an original part of Quran, or was it inserted by the Umayyads in order to debate like you know, like you could go there, you could have it's like the Islamic discussion about why the Gulfs are less related to the Palestinian question, does have a theological aspect and historical aspect. Like my qu my remark about Biden was to say that the economical structure of the area as a pass of energy is probably still the main the main decider. There is no conflict about the this route of trade. Like you could see some linke people against it in this like some maybe in Europe you will find some of people who think outside of it, but obviously it was a common thing needed um uh f uh uh by this you know conglomerate of uh international economy. Uh and it didn't pass by peace, it passes by war, you know? It's like uh um and the Palestinians, are they a side effect of the story or not? This is like i the Palestinians are not a question in the geopolitics of the area unless they take the initiative. This is like a good point in the political answer, right? Palestinians are not a factor of Arabness, they force themselves to be a factor of around this. Now the dangerous thing, talking about the imaginations and things that the dangerous thing is that if this is the only way we can draft people to support not destroying Il-Aqsa and not taking the West Bank, then my life is fogged, your life is fogged. Uh uh mundane life in Arab society is fogd. I don't want to call it secular, yeah? Because it's mundane daily practices, whatever they are. So provoking this imagination all the time, it just destroys mundane life. It's like the resistance to it starts also becoming very messianic. Because it's like if you're gonna raise, it's like if the messianic project is being built in front of my eyes, it affirms the messianic stories, and then it's a loop of messianics all over, Muslims, Jews, Christians, joining for a big party. There is no mundane politics of of of negotiating daily uh, you know, compromises of of trade, of free life. And then it's like uh okay, we'll wait till uh till the Messiah comes. It's like, you know? So it's like this is what's dangerous in in this Zionist project since the beginning. And yeah, of course we should talk about the material uh implication under it, but we shouldn't uh uh underestimate where does it gain forces, where does it have its support. Because again, if you look at the mountain, the temple is there. All these millions of people who are looking at the mountain and not seeing the temple are in a different mindset. This mindset does have to do with belief, with art, with uh, you know, with cultural, etc. etc.

SPEAKER_08 58:50

I know I yeah. In uh I think in episode one I I said it's a hallucination. It's like a hallucination to plan and sign the accords or see the Middle East, the new geopolitical reality without the Palestinians existing. Maybe art, maybe like an art framework is an interesting way. Maybe there is some language in that actually, when you see a thing, but you're not actually looking at it. You know, we definitely had in my house growing up a picture of a random mountain that was called Mount Sinai. I don't know what the hell it was. Could have been in Mexico, you know? And I and I would also be curious: can anyone think of a way that we can use what we're trying to get at as like a practice, like as a framework to look at these kinds of things and then be able to them to apply to other myths?

SPEAKER_03 59:38

On the one side, I think that the Abraham entails a lot of the theological like myths that are important, the chosenness, the like marking on the flesh, the circumcision, everything, everything is there. But I think we live in a messianic time through and through, and I would go to you know, check that, like that myth. And there is work, I mean, the the the problem is that you know, in the end of the day, then you can go to Benjamin, we studied it together, like weak messianism or like the Rida, the Messianicity without the Messiah, and all those things, they take the edge, the political edge of the the of Messianism. Yeah, exactly. But it's not fun without it. So the the masses are still like people are still they still want you know the story of the Armageddon. So I don't know how useful it is, but I would go to Messianism in our in our time.

SPEAKER_02 1:00:29

Waiting for the should we Yeah, that's yeah well I think we'll talk, we'll we'll keep we'll stay here and we'll keep talking. I just wanted to say that uh this discussion has made me extremely uncomfortable. Extremely uncomfortable. All of your questions were disturbing uh to the extreme and made me rethink the the the the the the the whole point of this entire exercise, and that's good. So thank you very much for that. Um the cringe is is is kind of the point, and we're leaning into it in this podcast. So thank you all very much for being here. Thank you, Ghouly, for everything. Thank you. Ben, I want to say thank you to the uh the the school of the school of business school of business and management at Queen Mary University, which also gave us some money for this podcast. And there's many other people to thank. You know who you are. Um thank you all very much for being here, and please stick around for a terrible beer and slightly better wine, and uh and let's talk more. Thank you.