The desert occupies a unique place in the history of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It is the landscape of revelation, exile, pilgrimage, and transformation. Abraham, Moses, Jesus, and Muhammad all encounter decisive moments of their spiritual journeys in desert environments.
In this seventeenth episode of The Mosaic Chat, we explore how these spaces are not only sacred landscapes but also major geopolitical territories. The Sahara, the Sinai, the Negev, the Arabian Peninsula, and the deserts of Syria and Iraq have long connected peoples, civilizations, and trade routes across North Africa and the Middle East.
Today, these same territories stand at the crossroads of some of the region’s most pressing challenges: borders, migration, security, water scarcity, energy resources, and climate change. Areas once associated with movement and exchange have increasingly become spaces of surveillance, militarization, and strategic competition.
Yet deserts may also offer new opportunities for cooperation. Solar energy projects, cross-border initiatives, ecological management, and regional dialogue all point toward the possibility of reimagining these territories as shared spaces rather than dividing lines.
This episode invites us to look at the desert differently: not as an empty periphery, but as a central element of the Abrahamic story and a potential foundation for future collaboration across the Middle East and North Africa.
🎙 A conversation with Pauline Berthaud and Galith Abbou Benichou .
📖 Inspired by Abramundi: Manifesto for the Creation of an Abrahamic Alliance in the Middle East and North Africa
