My personal response to the alleged caliph of ISIS/ISIL and his followers:

I have read your Qur’an. In ways similar to the Christian Bible, it can yield a variety of meanings depending on what one chooses to emphasize or deemphasize; what one chooses to see as historically conditioned or timelessly normative; and what one chooses to interpret as literal or symbolic. It is possible, if one has the necessary heart perspective, to read the Qur’an as an incitement towards love and personal improvement, that does not impede the freedom of others to seek their Creator with their own powers of reason and conscience.

If you read the Qur’an and understand the history and traditions of Islam as authorizing hate and bloodshed, it is because you read and understand them from the perspective of hate and bloodshed residing in your hearts. This book does not make you adopt a vengeful perspective or do violent things; at the judgment seat of the Almighty, you will be held accountable for your interpretation of it that results in violence, and originates from evil in your hearts.

None of us, including Christians or atheists, are exempt from responsibility for our own actions. I believe that on the day of judgment--whether that be conceived of as a literal future day, the day of our death, or the here-and-now judgment before our own deepest conscience--we will be held accountable not only for the tradition or worldview we hold, or whether we have lived up to the teachings of that specific tradition, but also for the particular interpretation of those teachings that we tolerate and endorse. I do not believe, for example, that I will be exonerated for actions that my own religious tradition may permit or require, but that cause or allow me to violate or stop short of what I know--in my deepest, most honest moment--to be true of love.

In this world, there are indeed sometimes wrongs inflicted, and historical grievances that seem to call for vengeance. Without denying the injury and moral outrage those wrongs present, we--Muslim and Christian alike--are nonetheless accountable if we choose to redress them through violence, rather than through that more difficult way of internal effort (which is one possible way of interpreting the word "jihad") towards reconciliation and forgiveness, that strives to put an end to the cycle of violence and bring about conditions of peace on earth.

I am impelled to write this because the world appears to be on the brink of a fresh cycle of violence, involving bloodshed of gruesome proportions--in forms that stagger imagination. I call on Muslims, wherever you live, to awaken and remember your accountability before conscience and the ultimate tribunal, and to openly name interpretations of Islam that condone violence as unworthy of the One you claim to worship. Those interpretations, to the extent they confuse the will of the Highest with human bloodlust, are idolatrous. You are no more exempt from naming this error in the interpretation of your own tradition than I am from naming ways in which my own Christian tradition hides behind interpretations that absolve it from the never-ceasing imperative to love.

It may be asked how I have authority to say such things. At such time as now, with the circumstances that dominate our news and those that threaten to follow, I dare to believe that truth should by no means be neglected--even when it arises through the imperfect medium of my own voice.