A Boy Named Adolf

Again a service for our readers in a hurry, Speed Coulter...

Title: My Name is Adolf
Osama and Adolf are bad names and bad people.
Muslims commit hate crimes.
Christians do not commit hate crimes.
Misquote Muslim students.
Bad Muslims, bad bad.

Now if you still feel the need to read more, here it is:

My Name Is Adolf
by Ann Coulter
September 11, 2002

AMONG THE PATRIOTIC lesson plans for 9-11 was one proposed by the National Council for Social Studies, which recommends a short story titled "My Name is Osama." Calculatedly inciting hatred toward white American boys, the story is about a nasty little boy, "Todd," who taunts an Iraqi immigrant named "Osama."

Jeeze Ann, it's just a sappy little story designed to teach kids not to judge others by their name or background. Mawkish, perhaps, but hardly designed to incite hatred towards white American boys.

This is the lesson to commemorate the biggest hate crime in history - committed by someone named "Osama" against people with names like "Todd." How about a 1942 lesson plan titled "My name is Adolf"? Might the 9-11 lesson plan inquire into what little "Osama" thinks about the terrorist attack? May we ask? (Question from the actual lesson plan: "Why, do you think, did Osama's family leave Iraq?" Incorrect answer: Because his father wanted to go to flight school in America.)

And if some poor kid was named Adolf (as I'm sure there were a few in America in 1942), should he be picked on for that reason? Or is Coulter's point that anyone named Osama is bad? No, that's too limiting, she seems to think anyone who is a Muslim is bad. Read on if you doubt me.

Since the horrific attack by practitioners of the "Religion of Peace," there have been a slew of hate crimes - committed by Muslims against Americans. Hesham Mohamed Hadayet murdered two and wounded many more at Los Angeles International Airport. Suleyman al-Faris, aka "John Walker Lindh," joined an attack in Afghanistan that left Michael Spann dead. Abdel Rahim, aka "Richard Reid," tried but failed to murder a plane-load of people on an American Airlines jet headed to Miami.

Yes, there are bad Muslims who try and kill Americans. Luckily there are no bad Christians trying to kill anyone.

The only backlash by actual Americans - not imaginary characters named "Todd" - consists of precisely one confirmed hate crime. Some nut in Arizona murdered a Sikh thinking he was a Muslim. Current hate crime tally: Muslims: 3,000 (and counting); White Guys: 1.

One hate crime against Muslims? From the New York Times (Sept 11, 2002): "Ali Almansoop, who had lived in America for 32 years, was killed Sept. 19 in one of a dozen murders nationwide attributed to anti-Muslim sentiment after the attacks. Among the victims were Sikhs mistaken for Muslims. Brent Seever, who was convicted of the shooting in June, said he was incensed at Mr. Almansoop's relationship with his former girlfriend, but also told the police, "I was motivated by all this terroristic activity." "

Further, the FBI and the Justice Department have reported big increases in hate-crimes against Muslim and Arab Americans.

Common sense tells one that this is a particularly stupid point to try to make. Clearly, there are enough bigoted idiots in the country that any conflict would lead to a rise in hate-crimes. (If we declared war on France, the next day guys with baseball bats would be attacking anyone they saw eating a croissant.) So Coulter's attempt to suggest these crimes are imaginary is, well, stupid. (If she wanted to suggest that, given the horror of Sept 11, regular Americans have been fairly restrained, that is a different thesis and one I've heard intelligently argued in a number of essays.)

In the spirit of specifically targeting only the worrisome Muslims, I note that the media have inadvertently identified several of them with blinding clarity. In case you missed these stories, I bring them to your attention so you will be forewarned: Do not fly with any of these kids.

Soon after the terrorist attack, the New York Times chatted with students at the Al Noor School, a private Islamic academy in Brooklyn - evidently the Arab equivalent of the Horace Mann High School (Anthony Lewis, '44). None of the students said they had experienced any harassment since Sept. 11. To the contrary, their school had been deluged with support from local Catholic schools, hospitals, state education officials and political leaders.

But the love was entirely one-sided. The students stated point-blank that they would not fight for America against a fellow Muslim, denied that Osama bin Laden was behind the attacks, and criticized the United States for always opposing Muslims.

"Isn't it ironic," one student sneered, "that the interests of America are always against what Muslims want?" (That's why the last several major American interventions abroad - in Kuwait, Somalia, the Balkans - were all conducted in defense of Muslims.) Though uniformly refusing to believe bin Laden was behind the terrorist attack, the students showed a remarkable lack of curiosity about who was.

These paragraphs are a nice distortion of what the kids actually said. For example, while Coulter states that the kids "stated point-blank that they would not fight for America against a fellow Muslim," in the actual Times piece it reads: "But some of them say that if their country called them to war against a Muslim army, they might refuse to fight." "Some" not, as she implies, all "the students," and "might refuse" not "would not." If you read the actual piece, you get a picture of very religious kids, liking some things about America, but conflicted by their choices.

Students from the Al Noor School were interviewed again a few weeks ago, this time by CBS' 60 Minutes. The students instantly and enthusiastically agreed with the proposition that a "Muslim who becomes a suicide bomber goes to Paradise for that action." "Definitely," one student said, calling a female suicide bomber "very brave."

"Do you believe they are martyrs? Holy martyrs?" Again, without hesitation, the students affirmed: "Yes" and "of course."

As to whether suicide bombers would go to Paradise, the students said they earnestly hoped so. "I mean, they're doing it for a good cause," one boy explained. "I pray that they go to Paradise," another said. Not only that, but one student said, "I think we'd all probably do the same."

Weeks later, at the urging of the principal, the students modified their answers slightly. But according to CBS, "None of them changed their view that suicide bombers in Israel would go to Paradise." The Islamic studies teacher at Al Noor claimed the students misunderstood true Islam: "If you go to chapter 4, verse 29, it says so clear, 'Do not kill yourself.'"

Again, these are kids at a very religious school. Also, I am without access to the CBS transcript, but, knowing Coulter, I have my doubts about the accuracy of her interpretation of the show.

That said, this whole line of argument begins by focussing a particularly extreme group within the Muslim-American community, and ignores the fact that most Muslim-Americans are proud to be part of this country, even serving in the military against fellow Muslims.

In November 2001, the Houston Chronicle, hardly a liberal paper, printed this article profiling a patriotic Muslim-American (Staff Sergeant Jamal Baadani) in the Marine reserves who had fought in the Middle East and was willing to do it again. Alongside him are about 4000 other Muslim-Americans in the US armed forces. But quoting from these Muslim-Americans wouldn't serve Coulter's thesis that all Muslims are evil and anti-American.

It's always so comforting when Muslims cite the precise verse from the Quran that tells them killing is wrong. Don't all empathetic human beings understand that instinctively? What if they lost their Quran that day and couldn't remember?

Hello? I couldn't count the many times I've heard a Christian quote from the Ten Commandments saying "Thou Shalt Not Kill." It's almost a cliche.

In any event, and more to the point, the Quran does not strictly inveigh against killing and dying for Allah. In the eye-opening book "Unveiling Islam," Christian-convert authors Ergun Mehmet Caner and Emir Fethi Caner say the Quran "promises Paradise to those who die in battle for Islam more certainly than it promises salvation to anyone else."

And how about this quote from Moses "Now therefore kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman that hath known man by lying with him. But all the women children, that have not known a man by lying with him, keep alive for yourselves." (Nu-31:17 King James Bible). So, after killing all the Midianite males, Moses got pissed at his troops for not killing the women and the boys as well. But he did let his troops keep the little girls. Gosh that Christianity is a blood-thirsty religion

The Quran instructs: "Fight those who believe not in Allah nor the Last Day ... until they pay compensation with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued." It promises that "if you are slain or die in the way of Allah, forgiveness and mercy from Allah are far better than all they could amass." Muhammad says: "Fighting is prescribed upon you. ... Tumult and oppression are worse than slaughter."

We all know I could go to the Bible and find scads more quotes like the one above, all justifying mass slaughter. Or we could look at the bloody history of Christianity, ranging from the Crusades, to the Spanish Inquisition, to the mass burning of witches, to the pogroms against Jews, to the Thirty Years War which killed 10 million, to modern day terrorists like the IRA "defending" Catholics in Northern Ireland or the Serb militias who targeted Catholics and Muslims in Bosnia. There is no religion without blood on its hands. Which is not to say it's religion's fault--the Nazis were mass murdering atheists--, rather, there sadly seems to be a universal human desire to eviscerate our fellows. And if a religion is handy, we use it as justification.

The real "Todd" of Sept. 11 prayed to a different God. Realizing the Muslim hijackers were on a mission of death, Todd Beamer and the other men decided to fight back.

He did not shout "God is great!" before ripping out an innocent man's entrails. He prayed: "The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: He leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for His name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me."

Yes, Beamer and the others were brave heroes. But that does not make Muslims bad people. This is an attempt to leap a logical canyon that even Coulter should have known enough to step away from.

©2002 Carl Skutsch. All rights reserved.
All opinions expressed herein are those of the author unless otherwise noted
(and it goes without saying that they make more sense than Coulter's opinions.)

graphics & design by pixelforge