https://www.theepochtimes.com/opinion/yes-its-a-religious-war-5512709Yes, It’s a Religious War
by James Gorrie
10/23/2023
NOTE: to read this article at The Epoch Times, either use "Reader Mode" in your browser, or disable javascript and then reload the page.Excerpts:Israel may not think that they’re fighting a religious war, but their Islamic enemies certainly think they are.
Regardless of how many observers try to characterize the animosity between Israel and its Islamic adversaries in economic, ideological, or geopolitical terms, the enduring animating factor is militant Islamism and its mandate to wage jihad against the Jews and Israel.
That fact alone makes this violence only the latest chapter of a long religious war.
In such a tense and treacherous time, where emotions run high, it’s helpful to clarify our terms. Let’s limit “religious” to meaning one who believes in the tenets and mandates of either Islam or Judaism. By “God,” let’s distinguish Islam’s Allah and Yahweh, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.
What’s more, let’s agree that the proclaimed endgame of Israel’s enemies, from Iran to Hamas to Hezbollah, is the end of Israel.
Does that sound too simplistic? Too one-sided? Too religious? It will seem to be so to some, but it also happens to be true.
Despite the Islamists'—and the leftists' around the world—attempt to frame what’s really going on right now in the Middle East as the liberation of the “Palestinians,” as if it was just about land, the conflict between Israel and its antagonistic Islamic neighbors is, at its roots, deeply religious in nature.
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