On 20th June 2014, Rabbi Sacks delivered 'Thought for the Day' on BBC radio where he spoke about the ongoing tragic situations in Iraq, Syria and elsewhere, analysing them from an historical perspective. Identifying the current conflict as "at least in part, a revival of a long standing conflict within Islam, between Sunni and Shia strands within that great faith", Rabbi Sacks noted that "if we look back across the centuries we’ll find similar conflicts within two other great monotheisms, namely Judaism and Christianity." Rabbi Sacks concluded that: "When conflicts within a faith cost lives within that faith, religion must cease to be the pursuit of power and become again what it was meant to be: God’s call to compassion for the powerless."