My column today is on Tim Pawlenty's very short-lived minority homeownership initiative that included encouraging companies to offer Sharia-compliant mortgages. The program really didn't go anywhere, which, in my view is a shame, since if you were trying to make it possible for members of Minnesota's relatively large Muslim community to buy homes then you'd have to offer them mortgages they could actually get. But since Sharia-compliant finance has inexplicably become a focus of paranoia on the right, even this innocuous gesture might hurt him in the GOP primary.
For the record, I reached out to Pawlenty spokesman Alex Conant for comment on this, and didn't get a response.