Ann Coulter: Vicious &
Ignorant
Ann Coulter: Her Excuse
Ann Coulter: Her Column
Ann Coulter: Her Excuse Debunked
Ann Coulter: Her Ignorance
Ann Coulter's controversial statement in her column that "We should
invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to
Christianity" is not the least of Coulter's sins.
Ann Coulter: Her Excuse
Coulter
claims that she wasn't speaking of all Muslims:
Coulter says her
line about "convert them to Christianity" has been
misconstrued and was aimed at those celebrating the attacks. "I
wasn't talking about Muslims generally," she says. "I was
talking about the crazed homicidal maniacs dancing in the streets."
[The Washington Post, October 2, 2001]
Ann Coulter: Her Column
Let's look at the full
context in which Coulter made her infamous declaration:
Airports scrupulously
apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy
Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every
passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the
homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade
their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We
weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top
officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's
war. And this is war.
[Town Hall, September 14, 2001]
A fair reading could be that
Ann Coulter wasn't explicitly referring to all Muslims, but that the
"they" referred back to those in the streets of Arab nations who
were celebrating the World Trade Center attacks.
Coulter's statement as thus
interpreted is, of course, still outrageous.
Ann Coulter:
Her Excuse Debunked
While Coulter can maybe get
away with parsing her own text here, I wonder if any commentators on this
brouhaha have taken what Coulter said in her column together with
what she said on Bill Maher's Politically
Incorrect September 25:
Ann Coulter: What's different about Germany than here, but I
think is more similar to Japan and ought to be the model,
is that Germany at least had a wealth of civilization prior to the Third
Reich and it had a respect for human life, something that was not as
noticeable in Japan. And one of the things General MacArthur did, he
considered converting the emperor to Christianity. Decided not to
because he thought there would be a fight between Catholics and
Presbyterians. But General MacArthur called in thousands of
Christian missionaries. He distributed thousands of Bibles. It
wasn't as much of a success story as the Christian missionaries were in
Korea after the Korean War, but you know how it was a success story?
They have unprecedented religious freedom there, something that is
absent in every Muslim country. In fact --
[Transcript of Politically Incorrect,
September 25, 2001, emphasis added]
This shows Coulter would like
to apply her conversion concept to entire countries, such as she believes
was done in Japan.
Ann Coulter: Her
Ignorance
Moreover, Coulter, as
the following dialogue, in relevant portions, makes clear, continues to put
her foot in her mouth, with respect to her claims -- begun above -- that
Arab countries have never had any "civilization," nor a history of
tolerance for other religions: ("Jerry"
is producer/journalist Jerry Nachman, and "Eric" is Eric Braeden,
star of "The Young and the Restless."):
Eric: We have to allow the tolerant part of Islam to
flourish. In other words, establish Democratic institutions and
then --
Ann Coulter: What tolerant part of Islam?
Eric: Islam has an enormous history.
Ann Coulter: Where is that in evidence in the Middle East right now?
Eric: Do you know anything about the
history of the Middle East?
Bill: Islam was the most flourishing
civilization in the middle ages. When Western Europeans were
shivering and cowering and cast behind --
Ann Coulter: Fine, they invented the flying buttress, but they
don't have a history of tolerance. That's the point --
Eric: She's absolutely wrong. Excuse me. You are wrong.
Ann Coulter: Well, then, name --
Eric: Historically, you are
wrong. In all the Muslim countries, they allow Judaism to flourish
and Christianity to flourish.
Ann Coulter: That's not true.
Eric: That is absolutely true.
Bill: Before --
Eric: In these kinds of countries right now, they don't. But
in most Muslim countries in the past, they have allowed religious
freedom.
Jerry: The Taliban is an exception, correct?
Eric: That's the problem.
Jerry: Ask any Jew who used to live in Iraq or Syria or Egypt
until 20 or 30 years ago.
Ann Coulter's ignorance of
history is amazing -- ignorance of the flourishing, advanced Arab
civilization in the past, and of the religious tolerance toward Christianity
and Judaism which was its hallmark.
Ann Coulter: not only
vicious, but ignorant.
[I won't even
address here Coulter's bloodthirsty analogizing to Germany in World War II
in order to support her contention that we should carpet-bomb Afghanistan
and not be concerned with civilian casualties. On the inappropriateness of
Coulter's analogy, see Ann Coulter's Bombing Germany Analogy Not Applicable to
Afghanistan.]
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