BEIRUT—President Joseph Aoun’s description of Lebanon as a place where “all the Children of Abraham can meet” was portrayed as a gesture of coexistence during his address to Pope Leo XIV.

But in today’s West Asian geopolitical climate—where religious vocabulary is routinely weaponized to cloak strategic realignments—the phrase cannot be read as benign or apolitical.

Instead, it was widely received as a rhetorical signal that echoes the ideological foundations of the so-called “Abrahamic project”: a project reshaping the region through normalization, security integration, and the erasure of historical memory under the veneer of interfaith harmony.

The issue is not the symbolic figure of Prophet Abraham himself, whose story lies at the heart of the region’s spiritual and cultural consciousness. Rather, it is the political economy of phrases such as “Children of Abraham” and “Abrahamic coexistence,” which have become deeply entangled with the strategic frameworks promoted by Washington and Tel Aviv since 2019.

Within this context, such terminology carries an unmistakable ideological charge: it signals acceptance of a narrative that reframes West Asia’s destiny around a supposedly shared religious heritage, rather than around sovereignty, justice, or the right of peoples to resist occupation.

Critics argue that even the banner under which these phrases are marketed—peace—is anything but innocent. In this region, “peace” has long served as a diplomatic veneer used to sanitize coercive political designs. 

Under the guise of peace, occupations are rebranded as security arrangements; structural dominance is recast as partnership; and the dispossession of entire peoples is reframed as reconciliation.

Thus, “Abrahamic peace” becomes part of a larger semantic architecture: a sanctified vocabulary that erases victims and legitimizes a geopolitical order built not on justice, but on submission.

The problem, therefore, is not merely the phrase “Children of Abraham”—it is the entire linguistic edifice crafted to neutralize resistance while installing a new regional hierarchy.

The circulation of “Children of Abraham” today resembles Imam Ali’s warning about “a word of truth used for falsehood”: noble language deployed to sanctify unjust realities. 

What matters is not the beauty of the slogan but the nature of its application—whether it empowers the oppressed or legitimizes the corrupt.

The narrative collapse becomes even clearer when measured against the Quranic archetype of Prophet Joseph, whose brothers—literal sons of Abraham—betrayed him, abandoned him, and repented only after confronting their wrongdoing. 

If betrayal could emerge from the heart of Abraham’s household, then invoking “Abraham” today cannot whitewash the violations committed by regimes and powers speaking in his name.

The modern political heirs of this rhetoric—those who occupy, displace, ethnically cleanse, rape, distort scripture, and desecrate sanctities—stand in direct contradiction to Abraham’s legacy of justice.

The true children of Abraham, then, are not those who invoke his name for geopolitical engineering, but those who follow his ethical path.

Since the 2020 Abraham Accords, the “Abrahamic era” has been marketed as a new horizon of tolerance and interreligious dialogue. Yet realities on the ground tell a starkly different story.

The Accords normalized relations between the Israeli occupation entity and a few Arab states while deliberately removing Palestine from the equation.
The principle that peace must follow a just resolution of the Palestinian issue was abandoned entirely. In its place, normalization was sold as a gateway to investment, development, and modernization.

Empirical results disprove these promises: no democratization followed; no economic miracles materialized; no stability emerged; and non-oil states that embraced the Accords sunk deeper into authoritarianism, financial crisis, and internal fragmentation. Sudan is one example!

Seen through this lens, Aoun’s phrase does not simply signal coexistence. It inadvertently positions Lebanon within a discourse crafted to legitimize Israel’s regional integration while ignoring its ongoing violations of Lebanese sovereignty.

By invoking the language of the “Children of Abraham,” Aoun echoed a vocabulary designed to portray Resistance movements as obstacles to a manufactured “Abrahamic peace.” 

Critics therefore interpret his words as aligning Lebanon—however unintentionally—with a project that seeks to redefine regional identity on theological rather than national, historical, or anti-colonial foundations.

Under such conditions, adopting a vocabulary tied to the Abraham Accords is far from symbolic—it carries tangible political consequences. It risks signaling openness to normalization, eroding Lebanon’s historic stance on the Palestine cause, and weakening the narrative that undergirds its internationally recognized right to resist occupation.

Ultimately, the critique of Aoun’s statement is not linguistics for its own sake. It concerns the political function of language in a region where words have become instruments of geopolitical engineering.

In today’s West Asia, terms like “Children of Abraham” are not invitations to unity—they are frameworks through which new power structures are legitimized and imposed.