A Jewish Massacre

The Zoroastrians were keepers of fire. The Jews were chosen to carry the light. Light exists to confront darkness, and darkness, in turn, strives to extinguish the light.

On Sunday evening—the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light celebrated in the darkest week of the year—a jihadist father and son brought unspeakable darkness to a Jewish congregation in Sydney, killing 15 and injuring 40.

That same week, an ISIS militant killed three Americans in Syria. In Germany, five Islamists plotted to attack a Christmas market. In Los Angeles, a man shouting antisemitic slurs fired 20 rounds into a Jewish home. Meanwhile, the FBI foiled a coordinated bombing campaign by a pro-Palestinian cell targeting five locations across Southern California.

This begs the question: what kind of culture—what kind of theology—fills the hearts of fathers with such hatred that they raise their sons not to build, but to destroy; not to live, but to die as martyrs in a war against strangers?

Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister during the 1973 Yom Kippur War, once said, “We can forgive the Arabs for killing our sons. We cannot forgive them for forcing us to kill theirs. Peace will come when they love their children more than they hate us.”

The West still refuses to confront an uncomfortable truth: the common denominator in all these attacks is a radicalized strain of Islam. Not all Muslims are jihadists—but every jihadist claims to be a good Muslim, at war with unbelievers.

Until the Islamic world undergoes its own Renaissance—one that cherishes life over death, truth over dogma, and earthly peace over 72 black-eyed virgins in paradise—the killings will continue.

If we do not name the evil, we cannot cast it out. The light will endure if enough of us are willing to become its keepers.

— Sina.