Page 4A OPINION East Oregonian Wednesday, November 18, 2015 Founded October 16, 1875 KATHRYN B. BROWN DANIEL WATTENBURGER Publisher Managing Editor JENNINE PERKINSON TIM TRAINOR Advertising Director Opinion Page Editor OUR VIEW OTHER VIEWS AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin A sign welcoming Syrian refugees is placed at the entrance to the office of the Arizona governor during a rally on Tuesday in Phoenix. Finding peace within the holy texts W¶VHDV\WRWKLQNWKDW,6,6LVVRPH ISIS, but we need ideas to establish sort of evil, medieval cancer that a lasting peace. Secular thought or somehow has resurfaced in the moral relativism are unlikely to offer modern world. The rest of us are any effective rebuttal. Among religious pursuing happiness, and here comes this people, mental shifts will be found by fundamentalist anachronism, spreading reinterpreting the holy texts themselves. death. There has to be a Theology of the %XWLQKLVERRN³1RWLQ*RG¶V1DPH 2WKHUDFRPSOH[ELEOLFDOXQGHUVWDQGLQJ Confronting Religious Violence,” the RIKRZWRVHH*RG¶VIDFHLQVWUDQJHUV David brilliant Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argues Brooks 7KDW¶VZKDW6DFNVVHWVRXWWRGR that ISIS is in fact typical of what we The great religions are based on Comment love, and they satisfy the human will see in the decades ahead. need for community. But love is The 21st century will not be a problematic. Love is preferential and particular. century of secularism, he writes. It will be an Love excludes and can create rivalries. Love DJHRIGHVHFXODUL]DWLRQDQGUHOLJLRXVFRQÀLFWV Part of this is simply demographic. Religious of one scripture can make it hard to enter sympathetically into the minds of those who communities produce lots of babies and swell embrace another. their ranks, while secular communities do not. 7KH%LEOHLV¿OOHGZLWKVLEOLQJULYDOULHV The researcher Michael Blume looked back Ishmael and Isaac, Esau as far as ancient India and and Jacob, Joseph and Greece and concluded that his brothers. The Bible every nonreligious population crystallizes the truth that in history has experienced SHRSOHVRPHWLPHV¿QG demographic decline. themselves competing for Humans also are parental love and even meaning-seeking animals. FRPSHWLQJIRU*RG¶VORYH We live, as Sacks writes, in a Read simplistically, the century that “has left us with %LEOH¶VVLEOLQJULYDOULHV a maximum of choice and a seem merely like stories of minimum of meaning.” The victory or defeat — Isaac secular substitutes for religion over Ishmael. But all three — nationalism, racism and Abrahamic religions have political ideology — have sophisticated, multilayered interpretive DOOOHGWRGLVDVWHU6RPDQ\ÀRFNWRUHOLJLRQ traditions that undercut fundamentalist readings. sometimes — especially within Islam — to extremist forms. Alongside the ethic of love there is a This is already leading to religious violence. command to embrace an ethic of justice. Love In November 2014, just to take one month, is particular, but justice is universal. Love is there were 664 jihadi attacks in 14 countries, passionate, justice is dispassionate. killing a total of 5,042 people. Since 1984, an Justice demands respect of the other. It plays estimated 1.5 million Christians have been on the collective memory of people who are killed by Islamist militias in Sudan. LQFRYHQDQWDOFRPPXQLWLHV