Apparently a lot of people who know nothing about Islam are now experts on Islam and sharia, telling Muslims what their religion actually says,” tweeted Shadi Hamid, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.
While Sharia is often defined as “Islamic law,” there is no single book of jurisprudence followed by all 1.6 billion Muslims. In fact, there are varying interpretations and legal opinions — called fatwas — most of which concern rituals, family matters and personal spirituality. In that way, Sharia is similar to Jewish law, and Israel is among the countries that allow Sharia courts, noted The Atlantic’s Jeffrey Goldberg.
Omar Suleiman, a popular Muslim scholar in Dallas, took a defiant stance toward Gingrich’s comments.
“Newt Gingrich, I’ll make your job easier for you: I believe in every single tenet of my faith,” Suleiman wrote in a Facebook post. “Because of that, I speak against extremists overseas and extremists like you and the fraud running for President. You can try to deport me now.”
“How do we ascertain — how do you possibly ascertain whether or not that person really wants assimilation, really wants a new life, or whether or not they want to expand that caliphate, which is what we’re at war against?” Hannity asked Thursday.
“The first step is you have to ask them the questions,” Gingrich responded. “The second step is you have to monitor what they’re doing on the Internet. The third step is, let me be very clear, you have to monitor the mosques. I mean, if you’re not prepared to monitor the mosques, this whole thing is a joke. Where do you think the primary source of recruitment is? Where do you think the primary place of indoctrination is? You’ve got to look at the madrassas — if you’re a school which is teaching Sharia, you want to expel it from the country.”
The comments by Gingrich — who was a finalist to be Donald Trump’s running mate before the real estate mogul tapped Indiana Gov. Mike Pence on Thursday — are similar to ones made by Trump himself last fall, when he called for surveillance of “certain mosques” to counter terrorist threats.
Gingrich also said Thursday that calling Islam a “religion of peace” is “bologna.”
“It’s not that Islamists are necessarily evil, but they’re not necessarily a religion of peace,” Gingrich said.
Gingrich then turned his focus to President Barack Obama, citing many leading Democrats’ argument for stricter gun regulation laws after the Orlando terror attack, where 49 individuals where shot and killed inside a nightclub.
“I fully expect by tomorrow morning that President Obama will have rediscovered his left-wing roots and will give a press conference in which he’ll explain that the problem is too many trucks,” Gingrich said. “If only we had truck regulation, then we wouldn’t have problems like Nice because it is trucks that are dangerous. I mean that’s the exact analog to Orlando and just tells you how nuts the left wing in America is.”
Trump’s campaign manager Paul Manafort was asked to respond to Gingrich’s comments on CNN’s “New Day,” but said he didn’t know what Gingrich’s comments were and what the context was.
“The point is the country’s got serious problems dealing with terrorism,” Manafort said.
Gingrich was also asked about Trump’s decision to select Pence as his running mate. The former House speaker acknowledged it appeared the Indiana governor was the choice, but said, “I’ve not been officially told.”
CNN’s Daniel Burke contributed to this story.
http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/15/politics/newt-gingrich-hannity-interview/index.html
By Sophie Tatum and Tom Kludt, CNN
