‘God’ told me to kill you

by Rabbi Brad Hirschfield writing for The Washington Post

Failing to call Islamic terror, Islamic terror, is dangerously naïve, if not willfully so. The same can be said for Jewish terror and Christian terror as well. All three exist, and for the purposes of this conversation, it makes no difference that they exist to differing degrees.

When terrorists sit at the feet of religious teachers who inspire their violence, when that violence is experienced by the perpetrators as the fulfillment of a religious obligation, and when they call out the name of God before hitting the plunger or pulling the trigger, that is religious terror, be it Islamic, Jewish or Christian. That is how the terrorists see it and for us to say that we know better than they do about the meaning of their own actions is absurd.

Not only is the current policy of shying away from admitting the truth about religious terror foolish, it is dangerous. One cannot address a challenge that remains unacknowledged. So unless one believes that playing ostrich – hiding one’s head in the sand and assuming that because we ignore the problem it will go away, is best course to follow, it’s time to switch policies.

We need to admit that faith is like a fire – it can warm a home or burn it down. It’s not the fire; it’s how it is used. We need to simultaneously call out those who use their faiths as destructive fires and also remind people that just because terror is an expression of some people’s faith, it is not the only expression of that faith, or even an essential part of it.

Clearly, people who run around ‘explaining’ that one faith or another is inherently violent, terrorist, or more dangerous that the others don’t know much about history. In fact, all three Abrahamic faiths have both shed the blood of others in the name of God, and had their blood shed by others for the exact same reason. But that is all more reason to stop pretending and start addressing the very real problem of religious terror, including Islamic terror.

Ironically, the people who should be at the forefront on this are Muslims themselves. After all, more Muslims die in the name of Allah than do Christians or Jews. We do those victims, not to mention our own national security, no good by denying the religious ground from which that terror springs. Nor do we help when we equate any one act in the name of Islam with an entire 1,500 year tradition.

There is Islamic terror, just as there is Islamic humanitarian relief. We need to appreciate the existence of both, fight the former and cooperate with the latter. We stand at a cross-roads and pretending that we do not simply because it is more convenient, simply will not do.

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