The Shepherd’s Test — and an institutional architecture for peace

The Middle East does not suffer from a shortage of history.

It suffers from too much history weaponised against the present.

Every stone can become evidence. Every ancestry can become a claim. Every scripture can become a boundary. Every grievance can be inherited by people who were not alive when it began.

Yet the Abrahamic traditions contain a corrective to precisely this kind of politics:

covenant rather than blood; deeds rather than lineage; stewardship rather than possession; justice even toward enemies; and shepherding rather than political theatre.

If those principles mean anything politically, they should eventually produce institutions.

My proposal is a Middle East Joint Peace Corps: not an aid charity and not another diplomatic talking shop, but a treaty-based multinational military peacekeeping task force composed substantially of states that currently distrust one another.

Its role would be narrowly defined: preserve ceasefires, separate belligerents, protect civilians and hospitals, secure humanitarian corridors, counter terrorism under agreed law, prevent reprisals from becoming wars, protect holy sites, guarantee agreed access to Al-Aqsa, and provide immediate stabilisation when local security collapses.

Its intellectual starting point is much older than the modern state.

It begins with Ibrāhīm (Abraham) عليه السلام.

1. The Chief Rabbi’s statement

In August 2026, Israel’s Sephardic Chief Rabbi David Yosef was reported as saying during an address at Jerusalem’s Gush Katif Museum:

“There is no such thing as a Palestinian people, and they have no rights.”

Reports also attributed to him claims concerning Israeli sovereignty over Gaza, Nablus and Jenin and the eventual return of Jewish settlement to Gaza. Because a complete official transcript of the speech is not readily available, these are best described as reported remarks.

I do not regard either Palestinian or Israeli as an ultimate theological category. Nor do I regard Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, British, French or Malaysian as one.

That does not mean such peoples or national identities do not exist. They plainly do.

My point is different.

I am not from the Middle East and do not derive my identity from an Arab, Palestinian, Israeli or Jewish national culture. That allows me to approach the controversy through another lens.

For Islam, the Muslim’s defining religious identity is not Palestinian, Arab, Pakistani, Algerian, Malaysian, Nigerian or British.

The Qur’anic category is the Ummah.

National identity may tell us something important about history, language and belonging.

It is not the highest unit of religious allegiance.

2. The Ummah crosses the womb

The Arabic umm means mother. Ummah denotes a community or people. They belong to the same broad linguistic family, although ummah should not simply be translated as “mother.”

There is an even more explicit linguistic relationship in the Sunnah between kinship and Divine mercy.

Ar-Raḥm — الرَّحِم refers to the womb and, by extension, ties of kinship.

Among the Names of Allah is:

Ar-Raḥmān — الرَّحْمَٰن

Abū Hurayrah رضي الله عنه narrated that Prophet Muhammad ﷺ said:

“The word ‘Ar-Raḥm’ derives its name from Ar-Raḥmān … and Allah said: ‘I will keep good relation with the one who keeps good relation with you, and sever the relation with the one who severs relation with you.’”

— Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5988, Book 78, Hadith 19

Ṣaḥīḥ al-Bukhārī 5988⁠

إِنَّ الرَّحِمَ شُجْنَةٌ مِنَ الرَّحْمَنِ

The womb is therefore not treated trivially. Kinship carries moral responsibility.

Yet Islam establishes a religious community capable of extending far beyond biological kinship.

A Senegalese Muslim and a Malaysian Muslim need share no ancestry. A Bosnian Muslim and an Ethiopian Muslim need share no language. A British Muslim and an Indonesian Muslim need share no national history.

Salmān al-Fārisī رضي الله عنه is a beautiful early example. He was Persian, not Arab, yet became one of the distinguished Companions of Prophet Muhammad ﷺ.

The Muslim Ummah is therefore not a race.

It is not fundamentally united by blood, colour, cuisine, language, passport or national mythology.

It is united by covenant:

Lā ilāha illā Allāh. Muḥammadun Rasūl Allāh ﷺ.

“Indeed, this community of yours is one community, and I am your Lord, so worship Me.” — Qur’an 21:92

Ibn Kathīr رحمه الله records from Ibn ʿAbbās رضي الله عنهما, Mujāhid, Saʿīd ibn Jubayr and others the explanation:

“Your religion is one religion.”

Qur’an 21:92 — Tafsīr Ibn Kathīr⁠

This is theological unity, not ethnic uniformity.

I do........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)