The Hindu reports that an official of the “Indian Union Muslim League has asked the media and public to not to brand the perpetrators of the deed as Muslims.”
“I appeal to the media and the public not to brand the perpetrators of the Bangalore blasts as Muslims,” State president of IUML K M Khader Mohideen told reporters here on Saturday night.
“These kind of people are neither Muslims, Hindus or Christians. The Centre and the state government should take steps to nab them quickly,” he said.
That’s an example of what is called the “No true Scotsman” fallacy, a fallacy of equivocation and question begging. Here it is, from Thinking about Thinking (1975), by Andrew Flew:
Imagine Hamish McDonald, a Scotsman, sitting down with his Glasgow Morning Herald and seeing an article about how the “Brighton Sex Maniac Strikes Again.” Hamish is shocked and declares that “No Scotsman would do such a thing.” The next day he sits down to read his Glasgow Morning Herald again and this time finds an article about an Aberdeen man whose brutal actions make the Brighton sex maniac seem almost gentlemanly. This fact shows that Hamish was wrong in his opinion but is he going to admit this? Not likely. This time he says, “No true Scotsman would do such a thing.”
As long as we are declaring that the self-proclaimed bombers who self-identify themselves as Muslims and their organizations as explicitly Islamic are not Muslims, why don’t we go the whole hog and declare that there were no terrorists bombings, that there were no deaths, that everything is peaceful and tranquil?
Let’s live in fairy-land as the reality is too painful and our so-called leaders are powerless to do sh!7.
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