Battling Destructive Faith with Healthy Faith
How can your blood not chill — or boil — when hearing about (or seeing) the horrifying beheadings taking place in Syria and Iraq? People of the Western World are totally shaken, to the point of denial, by brutality not seen since the Middle Ages. But think again. Wake up: This is the reality of our times, despite our choosing (conveniently) not to notice. And now that these events are being thrown into our faces what are we to do? Should we simply ignore today’s battles (as many people would prefer. Hey, who wants to leave their comfort zones)? Does any thinking person really believe that these violent jihadists are not a threat to all of society? Is this the beginning of WWIII — a major confrontation between the West and Islam?
From a Jewish perspective the question, as always, is far more acute and immediate: With Israel at the center of the storm and its survival at stake we have no choice but to face the enemy head-on. And if we’re wise we won’t simply put out fires and slap on band-aids to deal with the symptoms; we will make every effort to seek out the roots of these attacks to remedy the issue at its core. To do so we must go back to the tent of Abraham and ask the big question: How would Abraham, father of all nations, including the Arab/Muslim world, react to today’s events? Or more bluntly put: How can anyone claiming to be Abraham’s child — the very Abraham who introduced love and kindness to the world; the very same Abraham who prayed for an infidel nation — behead another human being?! The entire basis of Islam, built upon the Bible, states that every human being is created in the Divine Image. How then can someone claiming to be a believer gruesomely murder the… Divine Image, while crying out Allahu Akhbar, God is the greatest?!… This is the question we should be asking and challenging every Muslim radical today.
Please join Rabbi Jacobson in this timely Middle East/Rosh Chodesh Elul workshop as he dissects the anatomy of religious murderers, who fanatically butcher others in the name of their faith. By uncovering the root of this modern-day evil we will discover a fascinating fact and and even more fascinating intervention: Behind this zealousness lays a deep passion, albeit vile and distorted. Fighting this passion therefore requires far more than the necessary military firepower to crush the enemy; it needs a healthy passionate faith to fight the fires of unhealthy faith and passion! We need nothing less than a spiritual revolution, driven not just by fear and defense of our lives, but by a compelling vision for all of mankind.
