Jeffrey Goldberg notes that the Washington Times op-ed page, long a clearinghouse for the anti-Muslim paranoia of Frank Gaffney types, publishes a piece speculating that embattled New York Democratic Congressman Anthony Weiner may be a secret Muslim based on his marriage to Huma Abedin, an aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton:
When looking broadly at the Anthony Weiner–Huma Abedin union, we have to wonder if the coupling of a Jewish American man and a Muslim woman of her pedigree was fostered by love or by a socialist political agenda.
[...]
It is also important, when looking at this situation, to remember that observant Muslims practice Taqiyya, an element of sharia that states there is a legal right and duty to distort the truth to promote the cause of Islam.
Given the defense articulated by the Imam, which would be offered only for a Muslim man, we must believe this opportunity to remove this Muslim woman from a union with an non-believer would be quickly taken. Therefore we must consider that Mr. Weiner *may* have converted to Islam, because if he did not, we have to consider the unlikely, that being that Ms. Abedin has abandoned her Muslim faith, even while she still practices.
These arguments aren't particularly unusual--in fact this kind of paranoid speculation has followed conservative anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist for years because of his marriage to a Palestinian American woman named Samah Alrayyes.
Like most of the narrative framework underlying sharia panic, this kind of argument borrows its infrastructure from the Red Scare. Intermarriage between non-Muslims and Muslims, like interracial marriage between blacks and whites in the 1950s and 60s, is evidence of concrete connections to political radicals bent on overthrowing the country. National Review writer Lisa Schiffren's speculation that Obama was likely a communist because "for a white woman to marry a black man in 1958, or 60, there was almost inevitably a connection to explicit Communist politics," comes to mind.
The fact that this is "nutty" though, doesn't mean it should be dismissed, because it's merely following the internal logic of sharia panic which several Republican candidates for president have embraced. There are a few basic principles that are at work in this argument that are broadly applicable to all sharia panic arguments:
The objective of nearly all American Muslims is to institute Taliban-style sharia law in the United States.
All Muslims are radicals, those who appear moderate are merely employing "taqiyya" or lying in order to pretend they are moderate.
Intimate connections (platonic or otherwise) to Muslims are always evidence of secret radicalism, specifically sympathy for the Islamist agenda described above.
While Republican candidates for president may not make such absurd arguments openly, the idea that America is in danger of becoming an Islamic state because of a stealth jihad waged by American Muslims can't really be accepted without buying at least the first two suppositions. And the third is merely the logical extension of the first two arguments. If all Muslims are stealth jihadists, and all moderate Muslims are faking, it must be true that Weiner is either a stealth Muslim or an enabler of the stealth jihad.
