December 02, 2024

On Tuesday, November 19, Georgetown Law School and the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace, and World Affairs hosted a program titled "Sharing Sacred Space in the Holy Land: Is Conflict Inevitable?" The event featured Catholic Law's Professor Marshall Breger, with insights from Joseph Sievers of the Pontifical Gregorian University, Rome, and Ingrid Mattson from the University of Western Ontario.

The panel centered around Professor Breger’s recent book, The Contest and Control of Jerusalem Holy Sites (Cambridge 2023). Breger provided a concise overview of the history and current situation at the Temple Mount/Haram, and addressed the challenges of shared sacred spaces both in the Holy Land and globally. He emphasized a critical issue: does the presence of one group in a sacred space compromise its sanctity for another? If so, sacred space becomes a zero-sum game. Breger advocated for examining Jewish, Muslim, and Christian texts to find potential solutions. He also presented a range of historical and contemporary examples of site sharing, highlighting both successes and failures.

Ingrid Mattson explored Islamic law concerning holy places, noting that in Mecca, Medina, and Jerusalem, sacredness prohibits the killing of any creature, even animals. Joseph Sievers provided a detailed analysis of the cooperative efforts among Christian denominations in recent years to repair the Tomb of Christ at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre.