By Scott Tibbs, December 19, 2015
It has become fashionable to compare the Rebel Alliance in the Star Wars movies to Muslim terrorists, especially how Luke Skywalker became "radicalized" (that word is key) to an ancient religion and carried out a terrorist attack that killed 300,000 people. This is a deeply flawed and incredibly offensive comparison that should stop immediately.
No, the attack on the Death Star was absolutely not a terrorist attack. It was a legitimate military target - a mobile space station that had just destroyed an entire populated planet that did not even have a military. Plus, when the Rebels destroyed the Death Star, it was about to obliterate the entire planet the rebel base was on, along with (presumably) billions of noncombatants. Destroying the Death Star and everyone on it was a defensive action.
Comparing Luke Skywalker and the Rebels to Muslim terrorists who wantonly slaughter innocent people is wrong-headed and offensive. Nothing the Rebels did was against civilian targets - they only attacked military targets.
If anything, the Sith and the Empire would be comparable to Muslim terrorists who intentionally target and massacre civilians. Darth Vader brutally slaughtered children in the Jedi Academy in Episode III, while Muslim terrorists from Chechnya brutally slaughtered schoolchildren in Beslan, Russia in 2004.
Yes, I know Star Wars is fiction. (I can't believe I have to say that.) Muslim terrorists, however, are very real. These silly memes represent a dangerously naïve attitude and tendency by some to sympathize with an enemy that wants to destroy Western civilization and rule over what remains. These foolish sympathies must be rebuked.
