Another mistake in Islamists' argumentation

Submitted by Prashant (United States), Nov 5, 2011 at 11:23

Dear Dr Pipes:

Peter Hall pointed out a factual error in Debanjan Banerjee's defence of Islamists. Peter Hall pointed out that the Romans offerred citizenships to the conquered people and hired them as soldiers. Peter Hall's argument may or may not be right but Debanjan Banerjee's argument has a serious flaw. A lot of Islamists find a crime or mistake done by a non-Muslim at a certain time in history and use it to balance a crime or mistake being done by Islamists hundreds of thousands of years later and even today.

Debanjan Banerjee made the same mistake. Islam was born a good three or four centuries after the Roman Empire declined. Human societies --even Islamic to some extent-- have continuously progressed toward more enlightenment from ancient times to now. Anything bad from several centuries back cannot be justified to balance the wrong being done many centuries later. So the Islamic apologists should understand that what Romans did or did not do should have no bearing on what Muslims are doing now. Whatever Hitler might or might not have done should have no bearing on whether innocent people should be killed in Mumbai or Jerusalem. And, similarly, if even if I grant that the Jews or Christian of Mohammad's time were the worst people in the village, that is not a reason not to befriend them today.

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