Anti-Sharia initiatives function like anti-gay marriage initiatives as a GOP wedge issue

Evidence

“Anti-Sharia law initiatives could be in future election cycles what anti-gay marriage initiatives were before,” Marc Ambinder from The Atlantic magazine once wrote. “That is, a cultural wedge issue that the [Republican Party] uses to ensure that hard-core conservatives enthusiastically flock to the polls.” To illustrate this point, Ambinder noted that former Republican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich once told conservative activists at the Value Voters Summit that, “I am opposed to any efforts to impose Sharia in the United States, and we should have a federal law that says under no circumstances in any jurisdiction in the United States will Sharia be used in any court to apply to any judgment made about American law.” — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 602

Categorization

• SEED: The explicit parallel between Islamophobia and the anti-gay-marriage wedge gives the capstone a transferable political-mechanism frame worth developing.
• corroborated: 2 independent passages support this claim — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 602
• XREF: connects to: Explicit Islamophobia has become an effective electoral strategy — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 508; Anti-Muslim sentiment operates independently of local political ideology; Anti-sharia panic manufactures political support while Muslims pose no such threat (+3 more)

Related

• Anti-Sharia legislation spikes in pre-election years to mobilize conservative voters. (similarity 0.84)
• Anti-sharia panic manufactures political support while Muslims pose no such threat (similarity 0.81)

Broader Connections

• Anti-Sharia legislation spikes in pre-election years to mobilize conservative voters. #expands (0.80) — Arsalan Iftikhar, Fear of a Muslim Planet_ Global…, 634
• Anti-sharia panic manufactures political support while Muslims pose no such threat #expands (0.75)
• Explicit Islamophobia has become an effective electoral strategy #expands (0.70) — Khaled A. Beydoun, American Islamophobia_ Understanding…, 508
• Anti-Muslim sentiment operates independently of local political ideology #complicates (0.50)
• Politicizing religion functions as assimilation as well as exclusion #responds-to (0.40)