Newt Gingrich said Thursday night that every person in America with a Muslim background should be tested and deported if they believed in Sharia law.
Speaking in the wake of the terrorist attack in Nice, France, where a person killed at least 77 people by driving a weapons-laden truck through a crowd of Bastille Day revelers, Gingrich said bluntly that Western civilization was in a war.
"We should frankly test every person here who is of a Muslim background, and if they believe in Sharia, they should be deported," he said. "Sharia is incompatible with Western civilization. Modern Muslims who gave given up Sharia, glad to have them as citizens. Perfectly happy to have them next door. But we need to be fairly relentless about defining who our enemies are.
"Anybody who goes on a website favoring ISIS or al Qaeda or other terrorist groups, that should be a felony, and they should go to jail. Any organization which hosts such a website should be engaged in a felony. It should be closed down immediately."
If they can't be destroyed through the Internet, Gingrich told Fox News host Sean Hannity, radical Islamic terrorists should be destroyed through "kinetic power."
"I am sick and tired of being told that the wealthiest, most powerful civilization in history, all of Western civilization, is helpless in the face of a group of medieval barbarians who, for example, recently burned 20 young women to death ... because they wouldn't have sex with them," Gingrich said.
Pointing at the images of horror in France, Gingrich said it was the fault of "Western elites who lack the guts" to do what's right and necessary.
"That starts with Barack Obama," Gingrich said.
Hannity paused before saying he agreed wholeheartedly with his sentiments.
Gingrich is on a shortlist to be Donald Trump's running mate for the Republican ticket, although Trump announced he would postpone his scheduled Friday announcement because of the attack in France.