[ by Charles Cameron — art, but can you bank on it? ]
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Sacagawea is for sure my favorite of the women hijabbed to the hilt in artist Stephen Barnwell‘s renderings of Islamic banknotes, US — it’s those two feathers of hers… The other two options are Susan B Anthony and Betsy “Crescent, star and stripes” Ross.

Unless, of course, Lady Liberty should have pride of place…

As for the Prophet Muhammad? Not kosher to show his face…

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There’s a lot going on here — some of the notes bear a distinctly non-Islamic 666, some are signed by Ayatollah Khomeini, leader of the Iranian revolution and Shia to the core — his counter-signer is Mullah Omar of the Taliban, a Deobandi-type Sunni. Oops. And FWIW, the United States of Islam was a Sunni concept.

Near as I can tell, these are all Fundamentalist Reserve Notes, which presumably means you can’t get silver for them. But look below, it specifies “in oil, payable to the bearer on demand”. Which, considering the US is the world’s #1 source of oil at this point, is probably no bad thing.

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The six dollar bills have a grim obverse featuring, if I’m not mistaken, Saladin:

and a series of precursor images:

And did you get that? Osama bin Laden and Abu al-Zarqawi share a note…

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Oh my, I have a 22 dollar note myself, somewhere, though it’s not about Islam taking over the US — treaure from some minor congressional election in Florida, years ago, with the crazy candidate’s face where portraits of Presidents usually go.

And then there’s also Boggs, who (among other things) drew a highly convincing banknote on a gallery wall and framed it — and when the cops came to take it down, they took the frame and lo! the image remained on the wall…

Artists!