Does History Matter?

The sun is at its zenith, the shadow of the general is directly beneath his feet. His eyes are focused at
the great wall standing between him and the fulfillment of his ambitions. The general is
commanding huge numbers and his army is continuously battering the great wall with huge rocks.
The infantry is impatiently waiting for the wall to fall and the action to begin. The Great general is
Salahudin and the city in front of him is Jerusalem. The Christians inside the wall surrender shortly
when they see a huge army at their doorstep. Salahudin prays in the mosque of Aqsa and is gratified
at his achievement.
After becoming the Sultan of Egypt his ambition was to conquer Jerusalem, he would not let history
become a villain in his dream. It did not matter to him what the Christians had done a hundred years
ago when they took Jerusalem from the Muslims. The only thing that mattered to him was how to
get the city back and he did get it back. My answer to the question posed in this topic would be that
History does not matter in determining what happens in future. What occurs in future is totally
dependent upon one's actions in the present and not the past. The last two lines of the poem
'Invictus' make my point
… ..” I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul”. The only thing that matters is the
future and history is by no means a tool for predicting future.
If history mattered or it had some part in determining the future then America, as we know it today
would not have existed. Four hundred years ago it was a mere group of sleepy Red Indian Villages.
Their recipe for success included only one ingredient; present. They used their present well to build
their future. Muslims on the other hand were a force to be reckoned with a few centuries ago but
now we are just a group of people with no actual power. Western countries tread upon us as if we
were dead leaves. They attack Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia and threat Iran and Syria. Why? The only
answer is that we did not use the time available to us for our future building but were in a blissful
oblivion of our glorious past.
That glorious past cannot return just because it happened at some time in the past but it can only
come back if we use our present time to make ourselves strong. Concluding history is just a
something that happened at some earlier time and we must regardless of what happened in the
past, use our present to secure our future.