With the latest news of bombs sent on airplanes to target Chicago synagogues, people are justifiably even more nervous about terrorism than usual. But how do we reconcile being cautious with appearing in any way racist or prejudiced?

 

Judaism  deals with acts and not dispositions.  We must act carefully and responsibly, while  realizing that until Islam polices its rogues, feelings of uneasy concern are grounded in news, not race, and these feelings are not based on pre-judging, but unfortunate conditioning.

 

With the latest news of bombs sent on airplanes to target Chicago synagogues, people are justifiably even more nervous about terrorism than usual. But how do we reconcile being cautious with appearing in any way racist or prejudiced?

 

I think that your question speaks to a very important and difficult issue.  As the other panelists suggested, Judaism allows and requires us to defend ourselves.  We have to be cautious when caution is required.  Yet, we have to be careful not to indict a whole religion or cultural group for the actions of some of the members, even if we feel that the number of their members participating in such activity is large or growing. 

However, we cannot ignore facts, for example, certain countries have become “hotbeds” for the training of such terrorists, so we must take precautions that are appropriate and backed up by the security information on the ground.  We avoid becoming prejudiced or racist by not extrapolating these security facts and methods to speak to all members of a particular terrorist’s religion or ethnic group in all situations.  Keeping our focus honors our tradition's imperative that we protect ourselves and keeps us away from violating our prohibitions against falsley judging others.     

 

Question:   “With the latest news of bombs sent on airplanes to target Chicago synagogues, people are justifiably even more nervous about terrorism than usual.  But how do we reconcile being cautious with appearing in any way racist or prejudiced?”

 

Your question could imply that there is something wrong with feeling anger toward someone who is bent on your destruction.  This impression, of course, would be incorrect.  The Torah, as amplified by later Jewish teaching, is clear about the sanction in favor of self-defense: If someone is pursuing you (“pursuer” is rodef in Hebrew; referenced in Deuteronomy 19 and Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 73a) with the intention of killing you, then you are obligated to defend yourself, even potentially to destroy your pursuer.

 

So there is nothing wrong about being “cautious” in these extreme circumstances.  However, what we need to caution ourselves about is attributing terrorist intentions to an entire group or category of people when only a small percentage of them possess such intentions.

 

I think it is fair to say that the object of your question is Islam.  However, it is not Islam that is the culprit here.  Radical Islam, or Islamism as some have called it, is the problem, not only for Jews, but actually for the world.  Radical Muslims have apparently targeted the governments of the United States, France, Israel, and even some Arab countries.  Their aim seems to be the disruption of normal life, and the establishing of a Muslim religious state whereever they dwell.

 

Let us be careful: Prejudice toward Islam supports the canard that Islam is fundamentally at odds with human, American, or Jewish values, an unsupported viewpoint that I, along with most people of good will, refuse to accept or credit.  There is no doubt that individual Muslims have caused grievous harm, but Islam itself is not the enemy, nor are most Muslims in the world.  

The adversary is religious extremism and intolerance for differences, something that we would perpetuate if we were to let feelings of racism dictate how we relate toward the religion of Islam.