Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich. (AP)

(CNSNews.com) – Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, a Republican, said he is “against waiting until we get killed” to defeat the Islamic State in the wake of the Normandy church priest killing.

“The French government knew that the priest was targeted. The French knew that the two guys who killed him were dangerous, and they did nothing,” Gingrich told CNSNews.com after a speech at the Young America’s Foundation’s National Conservative Student Conference in Washington, D.C. on July 27.

“I am against waiting until we get killed before the government decides to protect us,” he said.

This attack follows several acts of Islamist terrorism in France, including the Nice attack that left 84 dead and 202 injured after Tunisian-French resident Mohamed Bouhlel drove a 19-ton truck into a Bastille Day celebration early this month.

CNSNews.com asked Gingrich to clarify his comments on Fox News about deporting all Muslims in the United States who support Sharia law.

“First of all, I would define political jihad pretty narrowly but pretty real,” the former House Speaker said. “And you think you ought to cut people’s heads and you think you ought to kill people who are, who have left Islam for say Christianity or Judaism or whatever. You think you should kill gays and lesbians, and you think women should be totally subjugated. There’s a set of rules, which in Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, are regularly implemented.”

“The number of places that people can be killed for being gay is in 10 countries,” said Gingrich. “So there is a belief system you have to be careful about, and you have to say, those folks – it’s a very simple question: Are you willing to subordinate yourself the United States Constitution? Or do you think religious law supersedes the Constitution?”

“Because historically, in most of the Middle East, you can’t get to secular law because it’s all religious, and so you can’t assimilate,” he said. “This is a huge problem in Europe. We have several million people who refuse to assimilate. They don’t want to become Western. They don’t want to live in a secular society. They don’t want to live in the rule of law.”

“So they cluster in what the French call ‘no go zones,’” said Gingrich. “And we need to understand that that’s a real danger. That’s what I was looking at.”

Islamic radical holding a rifle and a Quran. (AP)

Earlier this month, Michael Steinbach, executive assistant director for the FBI’s national security branch, said ISIS is the most successful terror group in social media recruitment.

Gingrich believes one way to handle this situation is to monitor people who visit these types of websites.

“We’re going to have to have some ground rules that say, not so much we put you in jail the first time you look at a website, but if we find that you’re routinely visiting terrorist websites, we should absolutely be monitoring you,” Gingrich said.

He added, “If we find that your mosque is actively preaching jihad, we should actively be monitoring you and we should monitor the people who go there.”