Last weekend, speaking in New Hampshire, former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum became, I think, the first well-known GOP presidential hopeful to inject a Frank Gaffney-like understanding of Islam into the Republican presidential contest:
“We need to define it and say what it is. And it is evil. Sharia law is incompatible with American jurisprudence and our Constitution.”
Santorum, invoking New York Rep. Peter King’s hearing this week on the alleged radicalization of American Muslims, said that the “vast majority” of Muslims don’t want to it either.
“They left because of Sharia law,” he said, referring to why he believes Muslim immigrants left their home countries to come to the United States.
Santorum added, “Sharia law is not just a religious code. It is also a governmental code. It happens to be both religious in nature an origin, but it is a civil code. And it is incompatible with the civil code of the United States.”
This argument against Muslims practicing their own religion relies on an understanding of Taliban-style Islamic law as its only true iteration. But a Muslim eating halal and praying five times a day is also adhering to Sharia, in a way that is entirely compatible with the civil code of the United States. This is a non-problem, because even where two people enter into contracts according to Sharia, whether a marriage or a commercial agreement, civil law always takes precedence whenever there's a conflict.
Now Santorum isn't the most likely nominee, and this kind of culture-war conflict is the sort of terrain he's comfortable fighting on. The question is whether or not this foreshadows the current Sharia-panic currently sweeping Republican-held state legislatures becoming an issue in a GOP primary contest. It's easy to see another, stronger potential contender light on policy chops looking for a nice cultural wedge issue picking this up.
