Storm Track Appeasement: That Was Then. This is Now.

"All Muslims may not be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims." This is an established fact in today’s world. All one has to do is open a newspaper.

But this fact makes apologists and appeasers bend in any which way to find ways to distract people from this current fact and to do so they use an age old tactic that has become quite common in today’s political and social dialogue.

Point to the past to criticize a fact in the present.

Over the last few decades journalism worldwide has sunk to new lows and is ripe with sloppy thinking being passed off as studied opinion. You would expect this kind of sloppy thinking from high school newspapers and personal web sites who have a axe to grind backed up by no research and just personal opinion, not from the likes of today’s ‘professional’ journalists and columnists. But we see it all too frequently.

Take the quote above about Muslim terrorists. In a columnist for the Times of India by the name of Swaminathan S Anklesaria Aiyar, is all in a huff about the fact that in today’s world, all terrorists perform their terrible and cowardly deeds in the name of Islam.

Aiyar’s response? Muslims aren’t the only people who have committed terrorist acts.

And when has this happened? Why, throughout history as if that excuses Muslims who practice this vile art. Aiyar used the lame old excuse of reaching into the past to support his position in the present by ticking off a long litany of the history of terrorism and the countries that used it.

You know the game. America had slaves so America can’t critique the human rights violations of countries today. The Catholic Church had the Inquisition so how can Christians complain about Muslim abuse in Islamic countries today. Americans and Europeans had colonies at one time so they are responsible for the current problems of third world countries.

To counter the charge of all terrorist are Muslims, Aiyar reaches back throughout history for examples of countries that committed terrorist acts. But that doesn’t confront the Muslim problem of today. The only terrorists acts committed today are by Muslims in the name of Allah and the solution is not to blame those of the past but to confront the problem in the present. Aiyar is performing a slight of hand – the strategy of the magician. Misdirect the attention of the audience so he can perform his magic unnoticed.

If we can’t speak logically to each other in the present there can be no grounds for consensus on solving our problems now and in the future. Reaching back into history to defend a position or criticize others like Aiyar did will not help us understand our current problems and arrive at a solution.