Ramsey Clark’s Moral Equivalence Gone Mad

10 Jan, 2003 by John Hawkins

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Ramsey Clark’s Moral Equivalence Gone Mad: Left-winger Ramsey Clark, perhaps upset that he didn’t make the “Twenty Most Annoying Liberals List” this year, has said one of the most breathtakingly stupid things I’ve heard in years…

“The Christian Church overwhelmingly — there are exceptions — who choose to call Mohammed a terrorist. They could call Jesus a terrorist too. I mean, he was pretty tough on money lenders a time or two.”

First off, the “Christian Church overwhelmingly” didn’t call Mohammed a terrorist, Jerry Falwell did. While some people, including yours truly, criticized Falwell for that, Mohammed was not all sweetness and light. To the contrary, Mohammed was a man of war who had no qualms about converting people to Islam at the point of a sword. To compare Mohammed’s violent life with the life of a man of peace like Jesus or worse yet, to call Jesus a terrorist, is moral equivalence at it’s worst.

Clark then went on…

“The greatest moral force there by far is Islam because it is present in the prisons. They’re the ones that are respected, they’re the ones that are up at up at 5 a.m. and worshiping, they’re the ones that are praying five times a day and not ashamed to submit themselves to what they believe is a greater power.”

It’s great to talk about what a “moral force” Islam is, but there’s a problem. You see, maybe 10-15% of that “moral force”, the radical Islamists, don’t find it morally objectionable to slaughter people who disagree with them. Now while the rest of that “moral force” may not have those same radical beliefs, sympathy from “moderate” Muslims for radicals is commonplace. Look to the wide support for Palestinian terrorism and Osama Bin Laden in the Islamic world if you don’t believe that. So while Islam and the majority of its practitioners are not our enemies, trying to pretend that Islam is the “greatest moral force there by far is” sounds ludicrous in a world where we have terrorists & dictators committing atrocity after atrocity in the name of Islam with few voices within the Islamic community being raised against them. That’s reality, something which Ramsey Clark and the rest of his ilk in the anti-war movement have great difficulty facing.