The Abrahamic Family House: Architecture and geopolitics of tolerance

The history of religious institutions teaches that political patronage does not nullify the spiritual scope of a place. Cathedrals have been built by princes. Mosques have been financed by sultans. Synagogues have been constructed under royal protection. This has not reduced them to instruments of propaganda. Over time, these places have developed a life of their own, a memory of their own, a transformative power of their own over those who frequent them.

The Abrahamic Family House seeks to carry this possibility.

The question is not whether this complex is sincere or strategic; it is probably both simultaneously. The question is under what conditions an institutionally constrained space of encounter can nonetheless become a place where human beings truly discover one another.

Let us begin again from the start. On October 27, 1986, John Paul II gathered one hundred and fifty religious representatives in Assisi. The formula was carefully chosen: not “to pray together,” which would have implied a liturgical fusion, but “to be together in order to pray.” Each tradition retains its own rites, its own invocations, its own relationship to the sacred. Copresence does not dissolve identity. It exposes it, without erasing it. It is this intuition that the Abrahamic Family House seeks to institutionalize. In 2019, Pope Francis and the Grand Imam of Al-Azhar, Ahmad Al-Tayyeb, co-signed in Abu Dhabi the Document on Human Fraternity for World Peace and Living Together. Never before had authorities of such stature, Catholic and Sunni, jointly committed their signatures to a text of such scope. The reception of the complex in the Arab and Muslim world remains heterogeneous. In diplomatic and governmental circles, the reception is positive. But at the level of populations, mistrust remains.

Any authentic dialogue will not require the disappearance of differences. It will require mutual recognition.

In this respect, the Abrahamic Family House does not produce a common religion and does not claim to. The Imam Al-Tayeb Mosque follows Islamic rites. St. Francis Church remains Catholic. The Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue remains Jewish.

The project is beautiful. It is also ambiguous. And it is precisely this ambiguity that compels us to think about it with rigor.

Two readings confront one another. The first sees in this complex the contemporary culmination of a long path of interreligious dialogue. The second sees in it an instrument of soft power, a state device that places religion at the service of an Emirati diplomatic strategy.

The United Arab Emirates is not a neutral state. Its constitution guarantees freedom of worship “provided that it is compatible with public policy.” This clause is not insignificant. It defines their regime of tolerance, and it functions. The Emirati complex as a whole is embedded in a geopolitical ecosystem in which religion is mobilized as a diplomatic lever, where interreligious dialogue serves to project an image of modernity and moderation toward a national, regional, and international audience. Copresence does not mean doctrinal convergence. The theological tension is strong. The project rests on the identification of a common denominator among the three monotheistic traditions. It does not produce a common liturgy, and cannot produce one. The three places of worship operate according to their own rites, their own calendars, their own ritual rules.

The Abrahamic Family House does not claim to resolve centuries of tensions, rivalries, and wounds. This house cannot, on its own, heal the geopolitical fractures of the region. But it performs an act. A deliberate, patient, and quiet act. What is at stake here is not a fusion of religions. No one is asking for that. One must be honest, however. The complexity of this project is real. The project is part of a long trajectory of dialogue. Permanence matters. A building remains. It will welcome tomorrow those who reject the concept today. It will pass through generations and accumulate memories. Children will enter it; they will see that the mosque, the church, and the synagogue can share the same island. It is precisely this ambiguity that makes the Abrahamic Family House an object of study. The United Arab Emirates, the state that finances and inaugurates this complex, also conducts an active regional foreign policy, marked by the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020. Religion is mobilized, at least in part, as a diplomatic resource and a tool of international influence. The site does not eliminate the institutional asymmetries among the three traditions it hosts. It simply makes visible, over time and in space, the possibility of an organized coexistence among traditions that have long ignored or fought one another. It is a starting point. What attracts is proximity. What changes is the possibility, for a believer of one tradition, to see with their own eyes how another tradition inhabits the space of the sacred.

Despite political tensions, the complex generates real and documented effects. Interreligious educational programs are organized there. High-level ceremonies are held there. Visitors from different confessions move through the same spaces, observe practices, and experience a form of proximity. The conditions are demanding. They imply broader access beyond the cosmopolitan elite. They presuppose exchanges that do not limit themselves to highly visible ceremonies. They require time, one generation, perhaps two, for the repetition of encounters to produce something other than a façade of coexistence.

At its core, the Abrahamic Family House is less a laboratory for the inner transformation of the person than a revealer of new inter-religious and geopolitical dynamics within the Abrahamic tradition.