Kabbalah’s Attitude Toward Religions

Question: I’ve been a student of Rav for about eight years; I respect him, am grateful for his teachings and seek to implement the teachings and his advice the best that I can, the same as Rav’s other students.

Raised as a Muslim, lately, I too have had a lot of concern about the talk about the Muslim faith, the questions asked, and Rav’s answers to them regarding the danger of Islam and the Muslims. I don’t believe Rav is anti-Islam or anti any faith. I do trust Rav, but can’t stop feeling pain whenever the subject comes up and the discussion around it.

I’m not sure that Rav’s response is always perceived correctly by most of his students and audience; some of Rav’s devoted students come across as anti-Muslim, I must say.

I am not a practicing Muslim, but know a lot of Muslims, including my own family, who are good people, practicing their faith the best way they can without feeling hatred and malice toward others.

Rav’s students raised as Muslims take a lot of risks following Kabbalah teachings, I’m sure Rav is aware of this. I don’t know what the solution is, but surely giving the unintended impression that one religion is more harmful than others cannot be very helpful.

Wishing Rav good health and success, always.

Answer: Kabbalah is not against religions, they all emerged from it. Baal HaSulam writes that even at the end of correction of human nature, there is a place for all religions.

I’m just against the distortion of religions we see today: Judaism has turned solely into the method of performing mechanical actions, Christianity engages in purely external decorations, and Islam demonstrates its hatred to everyone and in everything.

Indeed, the source of all religions, Kabbalah (see Baal HaSulam’s article “The Essence of Religion and Its Purpose”), calls all the nations of the world only for unification and love above our egoism.

The practice of today’s Islam is active hatred and killings. At the same time, they have expelled the Kabbalists of Islam, Sufis, from their environment. I meet with them only in their exile from the Arab countries. So I cannot hate the true Islam, but only those who distort it today and turn it into the practice of hatred toward all people of other faiths, even within Islam itself.
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