Is Gingrich really much better than Romney on Islam?

Andrew Bostom points to the differences—so far untouched on in the presidential debates—between Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney on the Islam question. Romney, going beyond even the usual Islam whitewashing in the American mainstream, amazingly told a reporter in 2009 that jihad has absolutely nothing to do with Islam. (See my discussion of the Romney interview.) By contrast, Gingrich, whom Bostom praises for his “vanishingly rare intellectual honesty and resolve,” has warned in the strongest terms that the Islamic law, sharia, is incompatible with and fatal to Western society.

Bostom quotes Gingrich:

Stealth jihadis use political, cultural, societal, religious, intellectual tools; violent jihadis use violence. But in fact they’re both engaged in jihad and they’re both seeking to impose the same end state which is to replace Western civilization with a [radical] imposition of Sharia.

The fight against Sharia and the madrassas in mosques which teach hatred and fanaticism is the heart of the enemy movement from which the terrorists spring forth. It’s time we had a national debate on this. One of the things I’m going to suggest today is a federal law which says no court anywhere in the United States under any circumstance is allowed to consider Sharia as a replacement for American law.

Sounds pretty good, huh? But there’s one little problem with Gingrich’s strong sounding statement and with Bostom’s view that Gingrich is far superior to Romney on the Islam problem. As I wrote last week:

Each day of his life [Gingrich] spouts all kinds of intelligent-sounding things, but these things bear no connection with other things that he says and does on other days. He is a famed “intellectual” with no intellectual center….

The truth about Gingrich is that the more intelligent, forceful, impressive, and conservative his statements seem, the less meaning and reality they actually have.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 28, 2011 11:17 AM | Send