'Silence will only hurt us': After Roe, American Muslims know what comes next

When the US Supreme Court repealed Roe vs Wade at the end of June, people took to Twitter to warn: delete your period tracking apps.

With abortion rights no longer protected at the federal level, the decision is up to the states – more than half of which are likely to ban the procedure.

Now, states can tap their partnerships with federal security agencies to monitor their citizens, just as apps can share user data with third parties.

"For America’s Muslims, the war against women isn’t bound solely to the country’s zealous evangelical base: the SCOTUS decision, and everything that will come after it, belongs also to the security state that emerged in the wake of 9/11"

It’s more than likely that the state and private actors will utilise the country’s current surveillance technology and infrastructure to target people seeking abortions, warns a May report from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP).

The “healthcare surveillance” that already exists — the kind that could share data from period-tracking apps to third parties— is going to expand. This includes monitoring search engine histories, electronic payment records, and GPS tracking systems.

For many Americans, this level of targeted surveillance may feel unprecedented, but the country’s Muslim community is already prepared for what’s ahead. Muslim women especially are likely to feel the brunt of increased securitization.

Criminalisation agenda

For America’s Muslims, the war against women isn’t bound solely to the country’s zealous evangelical base: the SCOTUS decision, and everything that will come after it, belongs also to the security state that emerged in the wake of 9/11.

Darakshan Raja, Executive Director of the DC-based Muslims for Just Futures (MJF), explains that this latest measure will add another layer of surveillance on the community. It’s about reproductive health and justice, she says, but it’s also about criminalisation.

“You’re not even dealing with the police anymore. You’re dealing with the full might of the military state.”

A report from the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP) published prior to the court decision details the expansive technology available to anti-abortion groups and the state. In the south and midwest, not only will abortion become illegal in many states, but certain bounty-hunter laws may allow people to sue anyone for enabling an abortion.

“In this country, we’re up against a War on Terror complex, which literally criminalises us for having the wrong opinion,” says Aliza Kazmi, Co-Executive Director of HEART Women and Girls, one of many female and Muslim-oriented organisations responding to the landmark SCOTUS decision.​​

In conversation, she cites the work of journalist Vanessa Taylor, who has reported on the policing of Muslim communities and the psychological tolls of surveillance.

"The 2022 American Muslim Poll from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a research organization focusing on American Muslims, found that 56% of Muslims support legal abortion in most cases"

The groundwork for criminalisation is already being laid in unclassified federal documents.

A Homeland Security report from March names “abortion-related domestic violent extremism” among its list of potential threats to the country, which it links to both the pro-life and pro-choice camps.

By linking advocacy activity related to reproductive health to violent extremism, the DHS report brings activists under the scope of the federal security infrastructure, which will work with local security partners like the police.

Muslim activists raising their concerns about reproductive justice may be the first ones to be targeted. MJF has already cautioned its Twitter community about social media monitoring online.

Religious freedoms

While opinions vary across America’s vast population, the anti-choice debate is largely carried by conservative Christian groups. These include Liberty Counsel, whose leader was reported to have claimed that she prays with sitting members of the Supreme Court.

Yet many online spectators are quick to draw a comparison between Roe’s overturning and Islamic Sharia law. This unwarranted scapegoating of Muslims and Arabs is yet another holdover from the post-9/11 paradigm.

Islamic jurisdiction on reproductive health is much more liberal than people like Bette Midler seem to expect, but that isn’t the point that many activists are making.

“At the end of the day,” says Noor Hassan, a 23-year-old Muslim woman living in Richmond, Virginia, “my religious freedoms are protected under pro-choice policies more than they are under anti-choice policies.”

Noor is among a number of young Muslim women who are active online in the pro-choice debate. Videos on her TikTok feed have earned thousands of viewers watching her weigh in on Islam’s stance on the abortion debate.

In reality, the Islamic tradition holds a rich debate on the topic. For Dr Omar Suleiman, a prominent Islamic studies scholar, of the Yaqeen Institute for Islamic Research, contemporary jurists generally agree that abortion is permitted up to forty days into the pregnancy, and up to 120 days if the life of the mother is threatened.

Because there is no core Islamic text on abortion, Muslims worldwide, and especially in the US, hold diverse views on the issue of reproductive health and justice.

The 2022 American Muslim Poll from the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a research organisation focusing on American Muslims, found that 56% of Muslims support legal abortion in most cases.

These findings are similar to a similar survey conducted by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which found that only 7.2% of Muslims supported laws prohibiting abortions.

Professor Sadiyya Shaikh of the University of Cape Town has argued that many Muslims across the world, whether consciously or not, tend to the contraception and reproductive rights debate around postcolonialism.

Because more liberal ideas about family planning tend to be Western, they may be interpreted as encroaching on Muslim norms, triggering old feelings of “colonial resistance.”

In America, then, many immigrant families may adopt defensive mechanisms against pressure to appropriate Western norms.

Dr Shakira Hussein, author of the book From Victims to Suspects: Muslim Women Since 9/11 and an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne, is a researcher focusing on gendered violence and Muslim women. In her research, she was surprised to find that many married, even religiously conservative Muslim women consider abortions.

Even more surprising were the reasons they cite for any conflicted feelings they may have over the decision, most often regarding extra constraints on family resources.

“Pro-life’ arguments are not the driving force here,” Dr Hussein explains. Many of the women she has spoken to for her research discuss frankly their decisions to have abortions, “They clearly felt very conflicted about this decision, but not on pro-life grounds.”

The dichotomy between pro “life” and “choice” is another framework carried over from the Christian community. Many prominent Jewish activists have also pointed out the limitations of using evangelical ideas to set the debate.

“Many secular conversations centre on the question of whether abortion is a right. But in Judaism, we talk about responsibilities—to one another, and to God,” rabbi and scholar Danya Ruttenberg points out.

As a Muslim, the way Noor sees it is that “my religious freedoms are protected under pro-choice policies more than they are under anti-choice policies.”

What’s next?

For now, thirteen states have in place “trigger bans” that put into motion abortion bans after Roe’s overturning. The states already with the most restrictive policies are clustered in the mid-south, meaning that women living in any of them may have to travel long distances to secure the reproductive healthcare they need.

Noor’s family emigrated from Mexico four generations ago.

“Growing up,” she reflects, “it truly was a privilege” to be raised in the United States. She’s worried that her family’s journey, leaving behind political turmoil and restrictions on women, has come full circle. But she, like many in the American Muslim community, will continue to speak out against restrictive reproductive health legislation.

She knows the risks, she says. But it’s time to speak up.

“My silence will only hurt me and other women.”

Tabitha H. Sanders is a London-based freelance journalist covering security issues and the Middle East.

Follow her on Twitter: @thistabithahope