Another Open Letter to Newt Gingrich

Dear Mr. Gingrich:

I'm going to award you a prize. A prize for the most ignorance ever crammed into one sentence. Really. You outdid Trump, and that's no small-fingered feat. "We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background and if they believe in sharia they should be deported."

I just had to try to break that down.

First, let's try to understand what a "person of Muslim background" is. Would that include Boris Johnson, whose great-grandfather was a Muslim Turk? What about ex-Muslims, including ones who are known Islamophobes? What about non-Muslims who think Muslims should have religious freedom? Or people with Muslims in their families...*ducks blows*...like our beloved Muslim POTUS? I don't understand, Mr. Gingrich. I'm quite sure the Founding Fathers didn't describe people in terms of their religious "background," which is probably why it doesn't exist in the Constitution.

Second, a religious "test." Well, this one's been beaten to death after Trump called for a temporary ban on Muslim immigration "until we can figure out what the hell's going on." When your civics knowledge is below that of the average fifth grader, Mr. Former Speaker of the House, I'm not too confident you'll ever figure out what's going on.

Third, "believe in sharia." As Asifa Quraishi-Landes wrote in the Washington Post this morning, shariah "is a body of Quran-based guidance that points Muslims toward living an Islamic life....Shariah is divine and philosophical." You can believe in God, or believe in an article of faith, or a divine book, a prophet, etc. But we don't "believe" in shariah - we follow it. It's a legal and ethical system. Your ignorant commentary, Mr. Gingrich, belies a basic understanding of what "sharia" means. You'd fail a Sunday school test on the subject, but you want to test all of us.

Fourth - "shariah." You arbitrarily - and without authority - define shariah by headline-grabbing rulings involving stoning, flogging, subjugation of women, and death. Yes, there are a lot of troublesome rulings, as there are in every legal system. But as Imam Zaid Shakir has written, "Normative Islam is based on both rulings and interpretive principles. Those who, like ISIS, separate the rulings from the interpretive principles underlying them, both misrepresent Islam and open the door to varieties and degrees of harm that the religion strictly forbids." Like our system of common law, the sharia as a legal and ethical system has the tools to tailor rulings for different societies and different times.

This is emblematic of the acceptable drivel when it comes to my faith. In 2014, Fox host Megyn Kelly debated Hassan Shibly of CAIR-FL. Whenhe confronted her about her ignorance of maqasid ash-shariah, she retorted, "Well I know they stone women!" More recently, Ben Carson (who?) furthered the ignorance by saying "what I would like for somebody to show me is an improved Islamic text that opposes Shariah." Both of these public figures benefit from the vacuum of facts: no one really understands what shariah is, so it can be arbitrarily redefined as an object of hate. But you don't get to define it, Mr. Gingrich.

Would we take seriously a speaker who insists that American law is racist because of the Dred Scott decision? OK fine, old news. What about Korematsu v. US? That's still good law.

Fifth - deportation. The easy, low-fat, instant solution to every bigot's angst at the loss of an America that used to be great. Leaving aside the should-be-obvious problem of deporting US citizens, why is deportation always the panacea, Mr. Gingrich? Like it worked so well deporting MS-13 gang members to El Salvador in the 1980's. The gang that grew and thrived on a diet of blood, drugs, and guns and now has helped create the world's most dangerous countries and a humanitarian crisis at our own Southern border. Supporting the US Constitution has been a requirement for citizenship for centuries, and there are (believe me) a plethora of other ways to lose your immigration status. But your intolerance makes you scream out for deporting anyone you disagree with.

Mr. Gingrich, you can't test something you can't even define, let alone understand. Why should we be surprised, though, coming from you? You said poor kids lack work ethic, so they should be put to work mopping floors. Let's not even talk about your professed belief in the sanctity of marriage, when you couldn't even relate your own marital history without invoking your Fifth Amendment right. You equated aninterfaith cultural center near Ground Zero to a Nazi sign next to the Holocaust museum.

​Please let smarter people check your comments. Or, you know, just shut up.