The End of Roe Is as American as Apple Pie
But some liberal commentators insist on calling it a product of Islamic infiltration
Last week’s leaked Supreme Court draft opinion that would end the right to abortion in the US has generated anger—unfortunately, some liberals are falling prey to using racist attacks on Muslims to try to make a point about conservative Christians.
Cracks about the “American Taliban” and “Sharia Law” to explain away the origins of the US conservative movement aren’t new. The point is to argue that “their cruelty and anti-woman hatred is bad because it’s reduced our once civilized and enlightened society to the level of the Global South,” as Adam Johnson wrote last year.
Othering the embarrassing right-wing politics of an evangelical movement that’s been a part of US politics for centuries through “jokes” goes a long way toward arguing that there’s something different going on here than a continuation of a uniquely American approach to controlling people’s bodies.
“Joke or not, this neocolonial assertion that Afghanistan is backwards and that the pro-life campaign is an imported phenomenon, implanted in the minds of white Americans by conniving bearded Muslims, is testament to the prevalence of Islamophobia throughout the western world,” Nadeine Asbali wrote for Metro.
Despite the Christian religious bias on the court in favor of overturning the right to choose, liberal commentators and entertainers have targeted Islam in negative comparisons with the court’s right-wing justices.
Justice Samuel Alito—a Catholic—authored the opinion, which has not been made final yet. He was joined by fellow Catholic Justices Clarence Thomas, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. Neil Gorsuch, who is an Episcopalian but was raised Catholic, would be the fifth vote for the majority.
Nonetheless, Daily Show host Trevor Noah cracked that the American right were just envious of the Taliban.
“Isn't it amazing,” he said, “after all these years of the right screaming about the threats of Sharia Law, turns out they were just jealous?”
Journalist David Cay Johnson, who called a doctored image showing the court’s three female justices wearing burkas “brilliant political art,” told me that the point wasn’t Islam but “the hypocrisy and misogyny in the draft opinion.”
“The opinion after all cites the views if an actual witch hunter in justifying taking away a Constitutional right based on controlling women,” Johnson said.
When I pressed him on why he didn’t use art from the Salem Witch Trials or something similar, Johnson told me he felt it was a no-win situation. He had posted a photo of Handmaid’s Tale-costumed women protesting outside of the court earlier but was “immediately called a racist because all of them appear to be white.”
“I think the image demonstrates that the five justices want to impose their fake Christian beliefs, which are not supported by Scripture, on all of us and to specifically put women in a position of male authoritarian control, or male supremacy,” Johnson said.
There’s little more American than that.
This week on the podcast, I talked with Suchitra Vijayan about the rise in state violence in India targeting the country’s minorities.
I also had Mohammad Alsafin on to remember Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Alek, who was killed by Israeli forces this week.
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This isn’t Islamic infiltration: It is the result of members of the Knights of Columbus getting President Eisenhower to allow the words, “Under God”, to be inserted into the Pledge of Allegiance to the American flag many years ago. It’s time, now, to stop referring to the United States Supreme Court, and to call it what it is: The United States Sperm Court, which is being Dicktated to by the members of the Repubican Party, ever since Donald Trump knocked the L out of the word ‘Republican’. It’s obvious to all of us, who see our daughters and granddaughters threatened with the return of slavery, that those who have been put on the Sperm Court, in the past four years, have no intention of allowing women to be free, or even to vote, unless they are appreciated by some pale, stale, male. Let’s go back to the time when we all believed in the separation of church and state, or simply admit what’s going on, and start calling this the Divided States of America.