
You have to give them credit for subtlety on this one. But it’s still a combination of a false equivalence and a straw man. What exactly does “have to do with” mean? The implication is that “having to do with” means being responsible for. But is anybody suggesting that white people today are responsible for slavery? On the other hand, a great many people are suggesting that Muslims in general were responsible for 9-11. And yet even if “have to do with” simply suggests any kind of connection at all, there is another kind of false equivalence. One might conclude that white people today do indeed have some kind of connection to slavery, in the sense that they have inherited the benefits of slave labor. Muslims have not derived any benefit whatsoever from 9-11. On the contrary, they’ve inherited the impact of bigotry and persecution from it.