Posted by
David J. Hall on Thursday, January 04, 2007 10:49:36 PM
Recently elected congressman Keith Ellison, D-Minnesota took his oath of office today after sparking a firestorm a few weeks ago with his announced plan to perform his oath of office with his hand [not on a Bible, but] on a Quran.
The Quran (also spelled Koran) is the ancient holy book of Islam which labels all non-Muslims (and with specific reference to Jews and Christians) as infidels. A segment [large enough to concern any reasonable person] of the Islamic community around the world believes that the Quran is deliberate and literal when it calls for the infidels to either convert or be killed. Thus the firestorm of late.
In a move that was strategic and was intended to calm the firestorm, the congressman arranged to borrow for his oath of office ceremony the copy of the Quran that was part of President Thomas Jefferson’s personal library. Surprisingly (at least to me) this did have a huge calming affect on the firestorm of this controversy. Somehow, the general public seems to now reason that if Jefferson owned a Quran, then how can we be fair in resisting [through public debate] someone else having one and using it in an oath of office ceremony?
I must join my voice with a few others in asking: Where is our discernment as a nation? When did we retire our ability to reason? Just because someone has a particular book in their library does not mean that they endorse it. While we all would agree with that, somehow this nugget of reason has been lost in the current firestorm.
There is a huge difference between owning a copy of a book, and of pledging allegiance to it. Jefferson simply owned a copy (perhaps for academic reference, or as a gift or souvenir), but the congressman is a Muslim – he has pledged allegiance to this book and all that the book commands (commands that he or his Muslim clerics might interpret in a manner that is contrary to our national traditions, our history, and/or our Constitution and all of its Amendments).
While this oath of office ceremony is now passed, let us not assume that he is guilty nor innocent of the aforementioned warnings. Let’s just keep this topic under public “surveillance” and revive our national discernment and capacity to reason without succumbing to the politically correct crowd that says the Quran in an oath of office ceremony doesn’t mean anything. It does, and it will.