Six days ago, after Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL) absurdly tried to link Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan to “oppressive tenets of Shari’a-type law,” The Wonk Room’s Matt Duss jokingly predicted that anti-Islamic bigot Frank Gaffney would “claim[] that Elena Kagan ‘may still be a Muslim.’” Sadly, Duss’ prediction largely came true this week. In a Washington Times op-ed run alongside a doctored photo of Kagan in a turban (pictured to the right), Gaffney ropes Kagan into a bizarre fantasy involving Shariah law, the Muslim Brotherhood, and, somehow, the beleaguered Troubled Assets Relief Progam:
Dean Kagan had an even more direct connection to the Saudis’ Shariah-recruitment efforts at Harvard. She personally officiated in 2003 over the establishment of an Islamic Finance Project at the law school. The project’s purpose is to promote what is better known as Shariah-compliant finance (SCF) by enlisting in its service some of the nation’s most promising law students. […]
Shariah-compliant finance dates back to the 1940s, when it was invented by leading figures in the Muslim Brotherhood. This international organization has as its stated mission “destroying Western civilization from within … by its own miserable hand.” […]
Ms. Kagan’s Islamic Finance Project also has played a prominent role in encouraging the U.S. government to endorse Shariah-compliant finance. Notably, a founding adviser to the project, Harvard professor Samuel Hays III, conducted a “seminar for the policy community” in November 2008. It was sponsored by a former Goldman-Sachs-executive-turned-assistant-treasury-secretary, Neel Kashkari, who at the time was responsible for the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). The signal thus sent could not have been clearer, either to Mr. Kashkari’s colleagues in government or to those in the financial sector: At a moment when the very viability of major banks and investing institutions critically depended on this individual’s favor, it would be advisable to embrace Shariah-compliant finance.
Drawing Glenn Beck-like conspiratorial connections between Obama’s judicial nominees and plots to destroy America appears to be a conservative hobby. Both the Washington Times and Sean Hannity called district court nominee Judge Edward Chen “another Obama nominee who doesn’t appear to love America” because Chen correctly worried that the 9/11 attacks would harm race relations and religious tolerance in the United States. During the confirmation of Justice Sonia Sotomayor, a right-wing organization with close ties to Sens. Orrin Hatch (R-UT), John McCain (R-AZ) and Jeff Sessions (R-AL) launched an ad claiming that Sotomayor “led a group supporting violent Puerto Rican terrorists.”