American-Muslims, Abortion, and the Construction of a “Normative Communal Conservatism”

Abstract

The 2022 Supreme Court decision Jackson v Dobbs overturned Roe v. Wade, which provided federal protection to reproductive rights. The Dobbs decision catalyzed reactions from across the American landscape. This is especially true in different segments of American religious thought. One interesting phenomenon increasingly seen in minority religious groups is the bifurcation of intrareligious principles, whereby the religious permissibility of abortion and, to a larger extent, reproductive rights are presented in a binary fashion, facilitating internal conflict and tension within religious groups. One such example is the religious discourse ubiquitous in both the theological and legal realm in the American-Muslim community. The conservative American-Muslim position (i.e., high constraints on abortion) that claims to stem from traditional authority tends to oppose orthodox scholarly consensus, which in fact, aligns more with liberal viewpoints (i.e., low constraints on abortion). How can one make sense of this misalignment? The following paper will provide the legal and theological framework for this discussion, with an introduction to the concept of “Normative Communal Conservatism”, which seeks to explain this seemingly contradictory perspective.