El-Sayed's defense of Sharia law stance sparks online eruption from Christians, conservatives: 'He's done'

"Getting rid of Sharia law is White supremacy?" Watters said to El-Sayed, bringing up past comments from the Michigan candidate opposing a ban on Sharia law and comparing those efforts to White supremacy. "Can you explain that one?"

Sayed responded by comparing Sharia, Islamic law based on religious texts, to Catholic Church law and governance.

"Nobody is trying to push Sharia law on anyone else, just like I hope nobody is trying to push canon law on anybody else, because we live in an America where you should have the freedom of your religion," El-Sayed said.

Kolvet continued, "Sharia law is MUCH more comprehensive, governing all aspects of life, and historically, and according to many contemporary Islamic clerics, dictates the affairs of the state."

Fox News Digital reached out to the El-Sayed campaign for comment.

El-Sayed previously said he felt religiously obligated to follow Sharia-compliant practices in a 2009 interview with The New York Times.

"Ultimately, the question is, when I die and I stand before God and go through everything I did in my life, I don't want to say I did it the easy way instead of the Shariah-compliant way," El-Sayed told the Times.

"Not because of fear but because of obligation."

Sharia law traditionally prescribed death for people who leave Islam, placed strict restrictions on what women can do and allowed child marriage.

"The state of Oklahoma voted in a referendum to amend the constitution to ban Sharia law. What does that mean? I don't know. And yet the voters banned it anyway," he said in 2022. "The same exact forces that drove Native peoples from their land two centuries ago, destroyed Black Wall Street a century ago, bombed a building decades ago and tried to ban Sharia law not a decade ago, those forces are alive and well today.

"The reason I wanted to go all the way back to the 1830s is because you can't understand a Sharia ban without understanding the Trail of Tears. You can't understand the efforts to uproot Muslim Americans without understanding the Tulsa massacre. You cannot understand the challenges we face today without understanding White supremacy."

Fox News Digital's Robert Schmad contributed to this report