Quick, Look Behind You, It's the Sharia Monster

A very good Roger Cohen column on the irrational fear of Sharia, which the people who fear it most couldn't define if their lives depended on it:

Shariah is the new hot-button wedge issue, as radicalizing as abortion or gay marriage, seized on by Republicans to mobilize conservative Americans against the supposed "stealth jihad" of Muslims in the United States and against a Democratic president portrayed as oblivious to -- or complicit with -- the threat. Not since 9/11 has Islamophobia been at such a pitch in the United States.