Prager's Right(Update: Prager's wrong. As pointed out in the comments, members of other religions have been sworn in on their sacred texts.)
Here's a column from Dennis Prager on our
new Muslim congressman:
Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the United States Congress, has announced that he will not take his oath of office on the Bible, but on the bible of Islam, the Koran.
He should not be allowed to do so -- not because of any American hostility to the Koran, but because the act undermines American civilization.I couldn't agree with him more. Usually I'll read an editorial like this and the writer will go off onto a tangent, but Prager hits on all the points I would:
1. Jews have not taken their oath of office on the Talmud.
2. Mormons have not taken their oath of office on the Book of Mormon.
3. Atheists have not taken their oath of office on the New York Times.
He points out that Ellison is likely to get away with it, precisely because he is a Muslim.
An aside (okay a tangent) here: A lot of conservative commentators (including Charles Krauthammer and Jonah Goldberg have panned the movie
Borat for its supposed revelation that people in the heartland of America are intolerant. In fact, Borat shows that if anything, people are
too tolerant of a boorish, sexist kook. Ditto with Ellison and his quest to be sworn in on the Koran.
