This week was the 13th anniversary of the horrific murder of journalist Daniel Pearl by Pakistani militants.
Pearl was kidnapped while working as the South Asia Bureau Chief of the Wall Street Journal and murdered by those who supposedly had links to Al Queda.
Since his death, evil in our world has continued to grow. African rebels take children away from their parents in grotesque civil wars.
Thousands and thousands of babies and children are starving and homeless as the war continues to rage in Syria.
The Islamic State (ISIS and ISIL) commits atrocities that know no boundaries.
We are sickened as we read of the latest murder by Islamic State terrorists: they lit a fire in a cage and burned alive the Jordanian pilot Moaz al-Kassabeh watching him die as the flames gathered all around. Of course they carefully recorded everything to show the rest of the world their deadly deed.
Beheadings, burnings, killings…these terrorists have lost all of their humanity.
They do this in the name of…Allah? Allah would not require barbarity and violence.
Allah would not ask that children become suicide bombers and become “martyrs” for their people.
No God who grants life requires death and violence and evil.
We learn in Pirke Avot – The Ethics of the Fathers: “In a place where there are no men (sic), strive to be a man”. (Pirke Avot 2:5)
This world will not be healed unless each of us stands up against the inhumanity, against the terror, against the evil and shows what it means to be a human being.
Each one of us needs to express our outrage, our indignation, our disgust, our shame at the evil taking place around us.
Each one of us needs to find our voice to speak out against evil – where ever it takes place, to take action against it. This is what it means to “strive to be a human being.”
May the barbarity and violence and evil end soon.