CPAC Head Says Iranian Schoolgirls Are Better Dead Than “in a Burqa”
Conservative MAGA ideologue Matt Schlapp tried to justify the killing of more than 100 girls at an elementary school in southern Iran by claiming they were saved from religious extremism.
On Piers Morgan uncensoredSchlapp participated in a panel discussion on the war in Iran and the bombing of the girls’ school that killed approximately 175 people (almost all young children). Journalist Peter Beinart argued before Morgan that the United States and Israel were responsible even if the school was hit in some way by an Iranian missile.
“We know that if the United States and Israel had not attacked a country that poses no serious threat to them — Israel has hundreds of nuclear weapons, America has thousands — these girls would be alive,” Beinart said. Schlapp intervened immediately.
“They would be alive in a burqa”, Schlapp saidadding “this is…a barbaric society”, before Morgan intervenes and asks him to “hang in there”.
Peter Beinart: If the United States and Israel had not launched an attack on a country that poses no serious threat to them, these 180 schoolgirls would be alive today.
Matt Schlapp (speaker): “They would be alive in a burqa… It’s a barbaric society. »
(Schlapp is a… https://t.co/yIS5fNdfCj pic.twitter.com/10jLgRR5Tk– Drop Site (@DropSiteNews) March 5, 2026
Later, Schlapp tried to defend his point of view.
“It is hypocritical to say that these attacks harmed women and children when these women and children, the young girls you are referring to, would be living a life in a barbaric and unequal society behind a burqa, without the opportunity to make career choices,” Schlapp said. saidleft-wing commentator Cenk Uygur is outraged.
“Then kill them?” » said Uighur.
“No, that’s not what I’m saying either,” Schlapp said.
“That’s what you said,” Uygur responded, before Schlapp defended President Donald Trump’s decision to bomb Iran.
Schlapp heads the influential American Conservative Union, which hosts the famous Conservative Political Action Conference each year with top Republican officials. But despite his status (and his allegations of sexual misconduct), Schlapp peddles anti-Muslim bigotry and doesn’t even have his facts right.
While Iranian women still face the patriarchal laws of a theocratic government that human rights groups have criticalIran is not such a country that it is better for women and girls to be dead. The women of the country have high education ratesconstituting the majority of university graduates. Burqas are primarily worn in Afghanistan and are not even common in Iran, although the country’s conservative nuns sometimes opt to wear the burqa. chadora loose garment that leaves the face and hands open.
But Schlapp repeats a cliché unfortunately common in the United States, especially among conservatives: the lives of Muslims and Arabs are cheap, especially when we are at war with them. To these fanatics, Muslim societies are backward and if the US government does something bad to them, it is their society’s fault. Schlapp and the rest of the people should understand that women and girls, as well as all other Iranian civilians, deserve to live fully instead of being killed in an irresponsible war.
