Which is worse: getting perfected or getting killed?
October 16, 2007
Saint Thecla Monastery in Maaloula, Syria.
Either way, it’s the notion of a forced conversion to Christianity that’s shaking mainstream American media to its core. Lo and behold, people have suddenly discovered that Ann Coulter is – gasp – a bigot. How could she proclaim, out of the blue moon, that non-Christians should convert? What a scandal.
Except that it wasn’t a scandal when the intended “converts” were Muslims (all of them), and when she wrote that “we should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.” Contrary to what many people think, she did not get fired for writing this, as is explained here by the National Review Online itself. Nor was she attacked for going too far; after all, this was right after September 11, when emotions ran high and every “raghead” deserved to be scorned because of his “car-burning religion,” because Muslims have a “predilection for violence” and their “default mode is rioting and setting things on fire.” (Coulter’s quotes are easy to find on numerous websites, I will not link to any of her writing; I did my bit with Oriana Fallaci and that was enough.)
Muslims were not allowed to complain, for they had to bear the collective guilt for the actions of a few men, mostly nationals of America’s strongest Arab ally. So nobody minded when Coulter wanted to convert Muslims at gunpoint. (Nor did Syrian officials flinch or bother protesting when she suggested “bombing Syrians back to the stone age”; who could blame her – they had after all rioted because of some really tasteful cartoons.)
Of course, it’s an entirely different story when Coulter wants to convert Jews. That makes her a racist, you see, and a racist of the most forbidden kind: an anti-Semite. Not that she wants to force Jews to convert (compulsion is purely for Muslims), but she thinks they should be “perfected” by becoming Christians (a notion that some of her coreligionists are actually defending as a correct Christian dogma).
Even Coulter knows that what is acceptable discourse with regards to Muslims becomes a huge red line with regards to Jews; therefore, she insisted that her offended host give her more airtime to explain herself, which doesn’t seem to have helped, judging from the outraged or exasperated comments in the US. But this same media shouldn’t pretend to be shocked. Since her eruption into American media, several years ago, Ann Coulter has been banking (royally, literally) on her shock factor, her rudeness, her insensitivity, her slandering, her lying, her bigotry, all of which became fuel for bestselling books (an incomprehensible phenomenon) and which became her trademark. It says a lot about American media and politicians that such an essentially stupid, ignorant, vulgar, offensive and prejudiced person should be given a platform in the first place.
It is pointless to waste more time stooping to Coulter’s level to attack her. But maybe the so-called independent media should begin to deliberate on the monsters they helped create, and on the deplorable standards, and the double standards, they have accepted as the norm. As for all the indignation about the issue of conversion, I still think the Jews got away with a lot less grief than the Muslims: after all, if these were your only choices, would you rather be perfected or killed?
