This is an approved summary of a shiur given by Rabbi Moshe Taragin.
When facing the horror of Islamic terrorism, our response must not be merely tactical in order to defend ourselves; rather, a religious response is required. When Islamic fundamentalists speak in the name of religion, they both distort and corrupt it. As religious people, we should recognize this as a corruption of our transmission and a hijacking of Hakadosh Baruch Hu and his teachings for our world.
Our religious response is on three levels.
1. The God of Life
The Rambam codifies the halakha that, when necessary to violate Shabbat in order to save a life, it should be performed by gedolei Yisrael. This is to emphasize that saving life under such circumstances is not a failure of halakha but a triumph of halakha. The Rambam extrapolates from this halakha to its underlying principle: The Torah is not vengeful and irksome but, rather, harmonious. The essential profile of Hashem is that of kindness and not of anger.
For 2,000 years, man viewed God as an angry, militant and vengeful monster until one man finally understood that God is kind and harmonious and deserving of human welfare. Indeed, Avraham was the first person to discover the synchronicity between the Divine will and human prosperity.
This is what we mean when we speak of ahavat Hashem. Despite the fact that our senses can’t perceive God and our brain can’t comprehend Him, we love Hakadosh Baruch Hu because we understand that His aim is not to suppress us but to enhance our lives.
This is a major difference between the world of avodat Hashem and the world of Islamic fundamentalism. It is the difference between a culture that celebrates death and a culture that affirms life.
Given our understanding of Hashem as a God Who wants the world to be blessed with goodness and prosperity, the true religious response to misery is an impulse to repair the world. We recognize that Islamists who kill in the name of God and distributes candies to celebrate murder of civilians are defacing the face of God.
It is true, of course, that there were times in our history when our ancestors were commanded to kill. The difference is that such commandments in our worldview are very marginal. It’s interesting that the commandment to wipe out Amalek appears towards the end of the Torah, in Parshat Ki Teitzei. Chronologically, it would have made more sense for this mitzvah to be mentioned in Parashat Beshalach after Israel’s initial encounter with Amalek. This would have given a very different message to the one the Torah actually gives. Can you imagine if one of the first mitzvot the people received – even before the giving of the Torah – was a commandment of genocide?! But this is not how the Torah chooses to present it because the central message of Torah is life affirming.

2. Motivation for Kiddush Hashem
Chananya, Mishael and Azarya draw their Kiddush Hashem inspiration from the frogs in Egypt. Why would they get their inspiration from the frogs?! The answer is that the frogs were incapable of doing anything for their own motivations. Similarly, Chananya, Mishael and Azarya sought Kiddush Hashem due to their commitment to the love of God. One of the paragraphs of Hallel begins with the phrase ‘lo lanu Hashem lo lanu’. The gemara says that this passage was recited by Chananya, Mishael and Azarya. They were telling Hashem – don’t save us for our sake. This is a critical juncture in history, we know that someone has to be willing to stand up to this tyrant and we are willing to do so for Your sake.
This was the sincere motivation of these three individuals whose Kiddush Hashem was motivated by the love of God. They were not motivated by their own interests but only by the desire to increase the honor of God. What a contrast there is between this attitude and the self-serving motivations of Muslim terrorists who murder in order to be rewarded with 72 virgins in the Afterlife!

3. The Relationship Between This World and the Next World
The third difference between avodat Hashem and Islamism is the conception of the relationship between this world and the next. The verse says ‘b’Yitzchak’ and the Midrash explains that the beis indicates the distinctive approach to this world and the next in the philosophy of Yitzchak and his descendants. The correct way to read the Medrash is not that Yitzchak alone acknowledges the afterlife (there are certainly other religions which affirm belief in the World to Come) but that Yitzchak alone understands these two worlds as existing along one continuum.
Much of contemporary humanity cannot imagine any world other than the here and now. And then there are those who are obsessed with the next world to the extent that they devalue this world.
Against these polarities, Judaism understands Olam Haba as an extensions of Olam Hazeh. Whatever spiritual level we have attained in this life, we enjoy in the next world. Our existence after death is not a reward for how we lived but the result. It is this fusion that Jews have stood for, for generations.
And this is so different from the mindset of Islamic terrorists who believe you can commit a crime in this world and employ it as an entry path to the next world. Your murdering of an innocent person in this world pays your entrance to the next. They do not view the next world as a spiritual continuum but rather as a reward for the putatively meritorious deed of murdering infidels.
Our lives as Jews must proudly exhibit these three fundamental differences between our path in serving Hashem and the philosophy of radical Islam. If you asked nine out of 10 millennials what they associate religion with, the answer today is likely to be such words as ‘death’ and ‘xenophobia’. Such a perception is a distortion of the God of life and love. Our response must be to counter this misrepresentation.