that Muslims shouldn’t fly in airplanes but instead ride “flying carpets.”
A few days later, however, Coulter spoke to a sold-out audience in the western Canadian city of Calgary, Alberta.
Security officials at the Ottawa college canceled her scheduled lecture after the controversial Coulter told a 17-year-old Muslim student at the University of Western Ontario March 22 to “take a camel” as an alternative to flying commercially. It was not the first such comment Coulter has made. Previously, she said Muslims shouldn’t be allowed on airplanes and instead should take “flying carpets.”
Coulter’s remark about taking a camel as an alternative to flying in a plane came after Muslim student Fatima Al-Dhaher challenged Coulter, saying she didn’t have a flying carpet.
“As a 17-year-old student of this university, Muslim, should I be converted to Christianity? Second of all, since I don’t have a magic carpet, what other modes do you suggest,” Al-Dhaher said to an applauding audience.
“What mode of transportation?” Coulter responded. “Take a camel.”
In response to Coulter’s comments, the New York Daily News reported that 2,000 students held a protest, letting the ultra-conservative commentator and author know she was not welcome on their campus.
Coulter brushed off the racism associated with her comments as “satire,” adding, “I can say it a lot quicker with a joke, and by the way, they wouldn’t be bringing me in here for a speech if I never told a joke, if I never used satire,” she told a Canadian TV news channel.
After having her speech canceled in Ottawa, Coulter spoke the next week to an audience of about a thousand at the Red and White Club in Calgary. The Calgary Herald reported that during the speech, dozens of protesters held up placards and chanted, “Ann Coulter go away!” One sign said, “I don’t have a camel or a flying carpet. Can you lend me your broomstick?”
Shauna Jimenez told The Canadian Press, “I think Ottawa had the guts to throw her out of town and I think Calgary should, too. We don’t need to this kind of stuff. It’s not what Canadians want.”
During her speech in Calgary, a student questioned her about her flying carpet comment. Coulter fired back, “That was a joke. You know how you can tell it was a joke? I know there are no flying carpets so, no, that wasn’t a serious point,” she said as the audience cheered for her.
She later differentiated conservative Calgary from other more liberal parts of Canada, saying, “I would like to make basically from Calgary to the west…the 51st state. We’ve got to save you,” to which the supportive audience cheered.
Coulter also drew cheers when she brought up her intention to file a complaint with the Canadian Human Rights Commission in regards to the way she had been treated by the University of Ottawa.
Provost Francois Houle of the University of Ottawa had sent Coulter a note before her scheduled speech recommending that she educate herself about Canada’s hate laws, saying that promoting hatred against an identifiable group could lead to criminal charges.
Many people in Calgary came out to show support for Coulter. Rick Dees, 53, said, “I love this woman because, though she says it maybe a little too strongly, a little too caustically, she has the right to say what she thinks.”
But others were frustrated by Coulter’s comments. “All it was, was a bunch of jokes put together, it wasn’t serious at all,” Hana Kadri, a first-year University of Calgary student said. Kadri added that she was shocked at how many people cheered as Coulter made her points against Canada’s health-care system and human rights.
Coulter is well-known for her incendiary comments. Giving advice as to how the United States should deal with Iran and Syria in February 2006, she said, “Perhaps we could put aside our national, ongoing, post-9/11 Muslim butt-kissing contest and get on with the business at hand: bombing Syria back to the stone age and then permanently disarming Iran.”
On September 14, 2001, Coulter wrote in her column, “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.”
During an interview with libertarian talk show host Bill O’Reilly of Fox News on March 25 after her speech at the University of Ottawa had been canceled, Coulter was questioned about comments she had reportedly made in Canada about wanting to put all Muslims on a No Fly List.
She said, “I just pointed out how ironic it is that the imams were threatening to boycott an airline and that if all Muslims would boycott airlines we could dispense with airport security all together.”
Some question whether Coulter really believes all she says or is just playing to the crowd to get more paid speaking engagements and sell more of her books. She is a graduate of Cornell University with a law degree from the University of Michigan.
