If you are a Hispanic voter or a Muslim living in the United States, it has been a bad couple of weeks. Hell, it’s really been a bad decade but it’s these latest developments I’m talking about:
1. Several states (including Alabama) have recently enacted laws that would ban Sharia Law from being practiced or from being considered when deciding court cases. Of course, these new statutes are hilariously useless as Sharia Law is not widely practiced in Alabama, as you might (not) be surprised to learn. This is just another religiously divisive ploy to whip up fears of radical Islam in states where it does not currently exist—states like Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Alabama have enacted this law despite having an Islamic population that is through the basement in overall percentages—so WASPs can feel their Republican votes in 2010 went towards something they do support. Instead of the thing their vote actually went to that they don’t support: union busting, corporate tax cuts, and income “reallocation” (a polished turd version of the word steal) from poor people to fund those corporate tax cuts.
Alabama has the most comically ignorant ban as GOP Representative Gerald Allen was asked by a reporter what Sharia Law is, and he couldn’t say. He didn’t know. He just knew it was Muslim, and therefore must be bad. In fact, Sharia Law isn’t a unified set of laws like a government has but actually varies wildly depending on who you’re talking to and what part of the world you’re asking the question in. Morons like Sharon Angle think it’s always extreme shit like honor killings and beheading women for infidelity, but it is most commonly used in the US to mediate mundane stuff like marriage contracts or property disputes.
2. US Representative Peter King—who has notorious ties to the IRA—has started a series of congressional hearings on “radical” Islam in the United States. Is the timing of this because there has been a recent terrorist attack? No. Is it because we have recently discovered Muslims hate us more than they did after 9/11? No. Is it because race and religious divisions have been used successfully by the GOP to win votes ever since the Civil Rights Act of 1965? Yes.
So right now we’re seeing the systematic rape and pillaging of the middleclass by union busting, by cutting funds to public schools to fund corporate tax breaks (Florida), and cutting programs for poor and elderly people to fund corporate tax breaks (Michigan), but the GOP is hoping to distract everyone from that with a shit show about radical Islam hearings. That way white, Christian voters can say “Finally someone is doing something about this,” even though it is a useless enterprise and nothing will come out of it.
What could possible come out of it? That we will learn some Muslims hate us? Is that really news? More importantly, after these hearings, it won’t be news to me if a few more Muslims hate us. One Republican congressman from California said “When I investigated skinheads, neo Nazis, and militia groups in the 1970s, there wasn’t this type of backlash.” Forgetting completely that by nature these groups are extreme and Islam is a worldwide religion with 2 billion people in it, everyday citizens that have no interest in extremism which you can’t say about a fucking militia. To compare the two groups shows congress won’t have to look far to find intolerance. Plus, if congress can hold hearings on Muslim extremism and crimes that haven’t happened yet, why can’t they hold hearings on the systematic pedophilia that has already happened in the Catholic church?
3. Several states have recently tried passing new legislation that will make it tougher for minorities to vote and some states (including, you guessed it, Alabama) have recently started new immigration reform legislation. All of this is targeted at a perennial Scapegoat: Mexicans. Is it that the GOP who has made a fortune off cheap labor actually cares that much about illegal immigration? Rush Limbaugh sure didn’t care when he asked one to score him some illegal pain killers. It’s that their voters do care, very much. Polls suggest that illegal immigration is in the top 5 concerns with staunch Republican voters even if every other group rates it a rather low concern at the time we face an economic meltdown, income inequality, climate crisis, two wars that haven’t fully ended yet, debt, etc.
So they beat the drum to end illegal immigration, and crack down on “voter fraud” of legal Mexicans actually voting. Then they pass a few new laws that might make it harder for illegals to draw welfare, and GOP voters feel satisfied that will end the problem of their tax dollars being wasted. All of this is just a pretty successful attempt to stir up Islamophobia and anti-immigrant sentiment (where people are afraid every Mexican they meet is a criminal out to rape their daughter) so that people don’t notice what’s actually being raped: their wallet. Specifically, their wallet by an uber wealthy class that refuses to pay the middle class, working class, lower class, and even the illegal class a decent wage. If people would put aside an instinctual fear of illegal immigrants, they might start to see they have something in common.
This is what the GOP is known for, using race and religion to divide people
I never really noticed the strange timing of these hearings but the more I think about it you do have a point
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