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
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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
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Confronting Religious Violence,” the
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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
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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.
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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
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demographic decline.
themselves competing for
Humans also are
parental love and even
meaning-seeking animals.
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We live, as Sacks writes, in a
Read simplistically, the
century that “has left us with
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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
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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.
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Sacks emphasizes that it is not religion
were once vulnerable strangers in a strange
itself that causes violence. In their book
land.
“Encyclopedia of Wars,” Charles Phillips and
The command is not just to be empathetic
toward strangers, which is fragile. The
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found that less than 10 percent had any religious FRPPDQGLVWRSXUVXHVDQFWL¿FDWLRQZKLFK
involves struggle and sometimes conquering
component at all.
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Rather, religion fosters groupishness, and
appears where he is least expected — in the
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voice of the stranger — reminding us that God
people outside the group. Religion can lead to
transcends the particulars of our attachments.
thick moral communities, but in extreme forms
The reconciliation between love and justice
it can also lead to what Sacks calls pathological
is not simple, but for believers the texts,
dualism, a mentality that divides the world
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between those who are unimpeachably good
contribution is to point out that the answer
and those who are irredeemably bad.
to religious violence is probably going to be
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found within religion itself, among those who
humiliated place in the world with his own
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moral superiority. He embraces a politicized
renounces power.
religion — restoring the caliphate — and
It may seem strange that in this century of
seeks to destroy those outside his group by
technology, peace will be found within these
apocalyptic force. This leads to acts of what
ancient texts. But as Sacks points out, Abraham
Sacks calls altruistic evil, or acts of terror in
had no empire, no miracles and no army — just
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a different example of how to believe, think and
thought to confer the right to be merciless and
live.
unfathomably cruel.
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David Brooks became a New York Times
Sacks correctly argues that we need military
Op-Ed columnist in September 2003.
weapons to win the war against fanatics like
Keeping our humanity I
in times of terror
After a day of being
reality of Syria and the background
noncommittal on the matter, Oregon of all those seeking asylum means
Governor Kate Brown said Tuesday the doors to our country should be
the state would continue to accept
closed.
Syrian refugees.
We would argue that
“The words on the Statue of
generalizations on an entire nation
Liberty apply in Oregon just as
of people, and to an entire faith,
they do in every other state,” wrote
are fraught with inaccuracies and
Brown.
prejudice. They are no way to
The point is a noticeably
inform policy.
minor one in the global cause of
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compassion, as well as the global
#porteouverte that trended on Twitter
war against
in Paris after the
terrorism. The
It translates
A 1938 Fortune attacks.
United States, at this
to “open door.”
time, is expecting
Magazine poll Parisians from every
to resettle 10,000
arrondissement were
noted only
Syrians, compared
asking stranded
strangers to knock
to more than
5 percent of
on their door and
500,000 expected
respondents said ¿QGDSODFHWR
to seek asylum in
safely for the
Europe. About 100
the U.S. should stay
night. It became a
of those refugees
raise quotas to sign of humanity
are expected to call
civilization on
Oregon home. (A
make room for and
what was surely a
mere diversion to
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more refugees terrifying night in
the still outstanding
City of Lights. If
—mainly Jews the
legal debate over
it can be done then
whether a state
and there, surely the
— trying to
has any say at all
rest of the world can
escape a hellish do it, too.
in federal refugee
programs.)
The United
Europe.
The vast majority
States must do
of refugees are
what it can to be
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safe and secure. Each and every
Syrian state, where whole cities have refugee should be vetted — but they
been turned to rubble, lawlessness
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UHLJQVZKHUH,6,6¶V6KDULDODZGRHV because of their country of origin.
not, and beheadings and bombings
This fear is nothing new. In a
are a constant threat. An economy
1938 poll by Fortune Magazine,
is nearly nonexistent, jobs that
67 percent of respondents said we
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should try to keep German, Austrian
education is all but an impossibility. and other political refugees out of
The future remains dark, considering the U.S., while only 5 percent said
that the majority of moderate, decent we should raise our quotas to make
people left the country. Only the
room for more people — mainly
extremists remain — those in favor
Jews — trying to escape a hellish
of despotism, and those in favor of a Europe. Again, as the Vietnam
caliphate.
War came to an end, 62 percent
of respondents to a Gallup poll
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disapproved of allowing more
Portland are preferable.
But in the wake of the latest
refugees from Indochina.
The desire for revenge and war
terrorist attack, dozens of governors
and destruction is real and heartfelt,
and nearly all the Republican
presidential candidates have said
but we must resist the urge. A war in
Syria, Iraq and the Middle East is in
the United States cannot take the
the long-term interest of ISIS. It is
risk of allowing any more refugees
from Syria. It seems the spark for
not in ours.
this position came from a Syrian
Both the United States and
Islamic State have a military. Both
passport was alleged to have been
found at the scene of the violence.
have proven the ability to blow
things up, but neither has proven the
The suspected leader of the attack,
ability to hold territory in the Middle
authorities revealed Tuesday, was
a Belgian national who had been in
East for a long period of time.
What makes us different is our
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currently unknown how he reentered heart, the decency to open our doors
the European Union. Some argue
to the downtrodden and terrorized.
That we cannot lose.
this lack of knowledge about the
Unsigned editorials are the opinion of the East Oregonian editorial board of Publisher
Kathryn Brown, Managing Editor Daniel Wattenburger, and Opinion Page Editor Tim Trainor.
Other columns, letters and cartoons on this page express the opinions of the authors and not
necessarily that of the East Oregonian.
Alongside
the ethic of
love there is a
command to
embrace an
ethic of justice.
YOUR VIEWS
Story of black cops killing
white boy not getting attention
On Nov. 3 at about 9 p.m. Christopher Few
was driving his white SUV with his 6-year-old
son Jeremy strapped into the seat belt on the
passenger side.
Suddenly, they were being pursued by
black Marksville, Louisiana, city marshals
Norris Greenhouse and Derrick Stafford.
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coming to a dead end and trying to back up.
The video shows driver Few with his hands
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arrest, he was unarmed, and there was no
apparent reason for chasing or stopping the
SUV. The father was critically wounded, but
the 6-year-old autistic child was killed when
hit in the head and chest with 5 of the 18
bullets. The father was so badly wounded he
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Maybe by the time this is printed there will
be some answers, but there are none at all
so far. The state police chief calls it the most
disturbing thing he has ever seen. The two
black cops are now charged with murder and
being held on $1 million bail.
Can you imaging the outcry if this had been
a black father and son and two white cops? Al
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Marksville along with Rev. Jesse Jackson.
The black mayor of Ferguson would be
leading a march, and Quentin Tarantino would
be preaching his cop hatred from the podium.
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the black federal prosecutor in Ferguson up
on the stage, and the “Black Lives Matter”
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and anarchy. We would see people marching
in the streets with more looting and burning
of stores and vehicles. More police would be
shot at and spit on. President Obama would go
on national TV to say if he had a son he would
look just like little Jeremy Few. Media outlets
would have a 24-hour-a-day barrage of reports
from Marksville. More college presidents
would be forced to resign.
The media coverage has been quick and
quiet. I guess no one has been willing so far
to come out and say that “White Lives Matter
Too.” There should now be thousands of
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Shoot” — except that this time it is actually
true.
David Burns
Pendleton
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