"Moral equivalency" is used by Muslims and their defenders to minimize or justify the violent terrorist acts of Muslims. Another term is "deflecting" criticism onto some unrelated event or behavior. Such deflection usually takes the form of citing acts of violence throughout history by Christians or Jews whenever anyone mentions violence or terrorist acts by Muslims. This is false analogy on several levels.
First, it is ignorant to defend one set of wrongs via citing another set of wrongs - like the clueless teenager telling his mother "everyone is doing it." News flash: Everyone isn't doing it!
Second, the comparisons are anachronistic. Muslim jihadi violence is ongoing, daily. Christian violence most often cited is related to the Crusades that occurred over a thousand years ago and in response to four hundred years of Islamic conquest. Or comparison is made to an abortion clinic bombing that occurs once every several years and is condemned by 99.99% of all Christians.
Third is the quantity of incidents. Violence in the name of Christianity is rare. Violence in the name of Islam is legion. Dozens of Islamic acts of terror in the name of Islam are carried out weekly.
Fourth is attributing acts of non-Christians to Christians. A prime example is saying "Christians dropped the nuclear bomb on Japan". That act was performed by a nation - not in the name of Christianity. It was to reduce the death toll from prolonged fighting - not to conquor in the name of Christianity. Or attributing the acts of Hitler against Jews to Christianity. Hitler did not practice Christianity. He denounced it. In fact, Hitler received significant encouragement in his holocaust plans by an Mufti [Sunni Islamic scholar]. See also here and here. This is a favorite tactic of non-Christians and of those who dislike religion generally.
Fifth is the difference in reaction. When a rare act of Christian violence occurs, it is roundly condemned by 99.99% of all Christians. When an act of Muslim violence occurs, it is generally cheered by large numbers in the Muslim community - except when an Islamic defense organization like CAIR makes a show of condemning it strictly for public relations purposes.
One common example of "moral equivalency" is the argument that the Christian/Jewish Old Testament contains a lot of violence and warring rivaling that in the Qur'an. Take a look at the real differences here. That is a false analogy - a "red herring." Another example is equating the dozens of Muslim acts of terror each week, the thousands per year, to the several hundred confirmed (versus alleged) cases of sexual abuse of minors by Catholic priests. This is not to say child abuse is excusable. But it is saying that killing scores of innocent people per week in the name of Islam is worse - definitely NOT morally equivalent. And Islamic violence is condoned or congratulated by fellow Muslims. Christian abuse is condemend by fellow Christians. THAT is a key difference that the apologists, the uninformed and shallow thinkers ignore.
Those who claim that the rare acts of Christian violence are "morally equivalent" to those of Islam are either not Christians, are anti-Christian or anti-religion, are uninformed, or have an agenda to further Islam.
Here are two articles that put "moral equivalency" in the context of current events.
"The Myth of Moral Equivalency" by Burt Prelutsky
There was a time not all that long ago when most of us agreed about what constituted good and evil. But that time, I’m afraid, has come and gone and is now as passé as five cent cigars and 45 cents-a-gallon gasoline.
Our former sense of morality hasn’t been replaced by immorality, at least not entirely, but by something that’s probably more dangerous because it comes cleverly disguised as broad-mindedness. Those in the mass media and academia ridicule people who still believe there are nations, values and cultures, that are superior to others, and they regard those Americans who have the temerity to disagree with them as yokels, super patriots and religious hypocrites. The elitists trumpet moral equivalency as an ideal. And yet, time and again, they display their own double standards. The same folks who were so upset about George W. Bush’s time in the Air National Guard and his early problems with alcohol aren’t the least put out by Barack Obama’s avoidance of military service and his admitted use of illegal drugs. Apparently even moral equivalency doesn’t exist if one of the parties is a Republican and the other is a Democrat.
Steven Spielberg and his sophomoric cohorts got the moral equivalency ball rolling with “Munich,” a piece of Hollywood hooey that contended that there was no real difference between Palestinian cut-throats murdering 11 Israeli athletes at the ’72 Olympics and Israel’s tracking the murderers down and meting out justice.
More recently, we had Barack Obama’s insisting that Israel’s taking steps to defend itself against the constant missile attacks from Hamas is as inexcusable as the attacks, themselves. But then what can you expect from a guy who kept insisting that Iran wasn’t worth worrying about and that the Jews should seriously consider giving up half of Jerusalem to people who insist that any piece of real estate they covet is a holy Islamic city?
Those on the left regard themselves as the moral, as well as intellectual, superiors of those on the right because they claim to see shades of gray whereas conservatives see only black and white. The problem is that most things are black and white, and the inability to realize that doesn’t suggest clearer vision, but only lack of courage and conviction. So, while those on the right are convinced that capitalism, for instance, is better than communism and socialism, and have no problem saying as much, liberals go around parroting sound bites. They would have you believe that Guantanamo is the same as Buchenwald, Bush is the same as Hitler, and that the members of the U.S. military are either the same as storm troopers, in the words of Sen. Dick Durbin, or merely uneducated suckers, according to Sen. John Kerry.
It is not the height of sophistication to insist, as left-wingers do, that modern day Judaism and Christianity are no better than Islamic fundamentalism. When the Islamists are blowing up school buses and pizza parlors, flying jet planes into skyscrapers and beheading innocent human beings, to suggest that these blood-thirsty Neanderthals are the moral equals of Christians and Jews is not only absurd, it’s an evil slander of religious people who have never done anything wrong, and who are guilty of nothing worse than worshipping a God whose name doesn’t happen to be Allah.
Furthermore, when leftists claim that Israel is no better than its enemies, they are not merely mistaken, they are lying and, what’s more, they know it. After all, Israel is a western-style democracy. They don’t go in for honor killings. They don’t go in for suicide bombings. They don’t bestow honors on people who bash in the heads of little children. They even allow Israeli Arabs to vote and to hold elected office. What’s more, Israel is the only real ally America has in the Middle East, no matter how many bribes we pay out to the Arab world and no matter how much lip service our politicians pay to the likes of Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Whenever I hear someone claim that he’s not an anti-Semite just because he’s always condemning Israel’s policies, I know he’s lying. On its worst day, Israel is better than Syria, Lebanon, and the Palestinian Authority. When a nation of five million Jews is surrounded by 150 million enemies who, day in and day out, plan and pray for its extermination, only a confirmed Jew-hater would insist that it’s Israel that must be reined in.
In conclusion, let me just say that moral equivalency may be a lot of things, but moral isn’t one of them.
By Brandon Crocker on 6.14.05 @ 12:06AM
Back when I was in college in the 1980s, the American and European left propounded a belief known as "Moral Equivalence" which essentially said that America was every bit as bad as the Soviet Union. The argument ran something like: "Sure, Stalin, utilizing the powers of a totalitarian state, executed millions of his own citizens, but the United States interned Japanese-Americans during World War II; the Soviets enslaved eastern Europe, but the U.S. supported dictators like the Shah of Iran." The point was that the world was made up of two "morally equivalent" superpowers that were both doing nasty things (though somehow the Soviet's actions were more "understandable" or even "defensive") in a struggle for world domination and that America, the leader of the "so-called" Free World, had no moral standing to object to the Soviet empire.
Apparently, the doctrine of Moral Equivalence did not die along with the Soviet Union. The left has just substituted a new evil to which the United States is supposedly morally equivalent.
Senator Ted Kennedy showed himself in the forefront of this revival with his venomous spewing on Abu Ghraib. On the floor of the Senate Mr. Kennedy proclaimed: "Shamefully, we now learn that Saddam's torture chambers reopened under new management: U.S. management." Saddam filled mass graves with hundreds of thousands of people, and tortured (by which I mean raped, cut off hands and tongues, electrocuted, conducted beatings with steel rods) hundreds of thousands more. Obviously this is the moral equivalent of a handful of degenerate guards making naked Iraqi prisoners form human pyramids or wear underwear on their heads.
And now Amnesty International writes that the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay is "the gulag of our times." I wonder what that makes North Korea. At Amnesty International they still can't resist comparing the United States to the Soviet Union and in ways as ludicrous as ever. Amnesty International would have us believe that there is no difference between Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and an al-Qaeda fighter; no difference between sleep deprivation in order to get information from terrorists and hard labor, exposure to the deadly Siberian winters, and malnutrition to "reeducate" political dissidents.
In the old days, many leftists promoted "moral equivalence" not just because they disliked the capitalist United States but also because they sympathized with Soviet Communism. The new moral equivalence arguments are just as silly. Those who make them, however, do so not out of any sympathy for Saddam Hussein or militant Islam, but simply out of a dislike of the United States (or, in the case of Senator Kennedy, a dislike of George W. Bush and the belief that engaging in disgusting calumnies against the United States is perfectly "patriotic" as long as there is a Republican in the White House).
The new moral equivalency, however, does not just deal with the United States, per se, but with Christian Western Civilization as well. Robert Reich, for instance, has written several articles and a book (Reason: Why Liberals Will Win the Battle for America) expounding the idea that "[t]he great conflict of the 21st century will not be between the West and terrorism....The true battle will be between modern civilization and the anti-modernists; between those who believe in the primacy of the individual and those who believe that human beings owe their allegiance and identity to a higher authority;...between those who believe in science, reason, and logic and those who believe that truth is revealed through Scripture and religious dogma. Terrorism will disrupt and destroy lives. But terrorism itself is not the greatest danger we face."
Pope John Paul II, Billy Graham, Jerry Falwell, Muqtada al-Sadr, Osama bin Laden -- all cut from the same cloth, so to speak.
This was the popular notion echoed by Ridley Scott in his film Kingdom of Heaven in which the real dangerous troublemakers in the world are the religious -- be they Christian or Muslim. Compare for instance the Christian world's reaction to Palestinian gunmen killing a caretaker and taking over the Church of the Nativity, and the Muslim world's reaction to false reports about a Koran being flushed down a toilet at Guantanamo Bay, or the Christian reaction to writers and filmmakers who produce works critical of Christianity and the Muslim reaction to a filmmaker like Theo Van Gogh or a writer like Salman Rushdie. Pretty much the same, right?
Well, not exactly. But that's what the left wants us to believe. Sure, we currently have a problem with radical Islam, but Christianity and Judaism, are really just as bad, just as dangerous. And the problems we are having with militant Islam should be reminding us that we need to be more frightened by Christianity, and particularly by Christians who think they have the right to cast votes based on their moral values. According to much of the left, we should regard anyone who has genuine religious convictions as a would-be member of the Taliban. Beware the coming theocracy headed by John Ashcroft and George W. Bush.
The tactic of arguing moral equivalence is to focus attention away from the obvious evil -- Soviet Communism or militant Islam -- and to refocus attention on the rather less obvious supposed evils of what the left sees as the more immediate impediment to the achievement of its goals -- America, with its heritage and value system that promotes capitalism and individual liberty, and Christianity which promotes an unacceptable moral code and the idea that there are things greater than the State.
The comparisons made by the proponents of moral equivalence have always been transparently absurd. Yet those that give voice to these arguments think their grotesque hyperbole is justified in order to make their point -- though they are often deceptive about what, exactly, that point is. But just as during the days of the Soviet empire, today's proponents of "moral equivalence" merely demonstrate their own moral -- and intellectual -- bankruptcy.