Ranger from the North

David Strom:

Which brings up the question: if reparations are the proper response to historical injustice, what other injustices and by whom, should reparations be paid?

Let's do a thought experiment: if white Americans should pay reparations for the European slave trade, then should Muslims pay reparations for their own participation in the African slave trade? After all, Muslims created the African slave trade, having invented it 700 years before white Europeans ever took advantage of the already-existing trade that was created by Muslims in the 7th century.

Muslims enslaved far more Africans than Europeans ever did, and Europeans almost never captured African slaves, but were sold those slaves by African rulers who raided other tribes. Venturing into Africa to capture slaves was far too dangerous for Europeans, who died from violence or disease, and many never even left the boat.

Muslims often participated directly in the capturing of slaves, including Europeans. The United States Marine Corps was stood up to fight Muslim slave traders.

And:

Should the Nordics pay reparations for the depredations of the Vikings, who rampaged throughout Europe and the Mediterranean for centuries? Should the Mongolians work to repay the descendants of Genghis Khan's victims? Should the Turks repay the Greeks for kicking them out of Anatolia? What about the Armenians, whose great-great-grandparents suffered through an actual genocide?

Who is doing the accounting for all this? Whose suffering counts, especially when nobody alive today experienced the actual suffering? Do 70 years of Affirmative Action count toward the reparations?

# posted by Ranger @ 2:28 PM