The first week of January saw the opening of the 110th Congress of the United States. Overshadowed by Nancy Pelosi’s historic role as the first female Speaker of the House was another congressional first: Rep. Keith Ellison of Minnesota becoming the first Muslim to be elected to congress.
Ellison, a practicing Muslim, decided to take his ceremonial oath of office on a copy of the Quran, rather than the Bible. To do otherwise would have been to undermine the binding nature of the congressional oath of office – a covenant made before one’s god and country, committing them to a service as sacred to the statesman as the faith and book they swear upon.
The unconventional swearing in of the Muslim representative did not come without controversy, as both religious fundamentalists and secular progressives found reason to complain. The far right raised issue with the divergence from tradition, choosing to see the use of the Quran as a rejection of the Bible and the Judeo-Christian basis of American culture. The far left used the opportunity to portray the presence of any religious text within state sponsored events as a violation of constitutional law, citing the precedent of the separation of church and state.
To say that the use of the Islamic text violates American custom would be ignorant to America’s longstanding commitment to religious tolerance and diversity. Equally off base is the suggestion that religion has no place in governmental proceedings, as the congressional bylaws were clearly influenced by religious practice, as intended by the framers of the United States Constitution. The First Amendment to the Constitution was intended to prevent religious persecution and bias by prohibiting the establishment of one religion over another, not the prohibition of the faithful from governing, or their faith from being present within the elements of the government they comprise.
Radio talk show host Dennis Prager, who is Jewish, saw the use of a different religious book as a needless contradiction to American tradition, saying the Quran, in not being directly influential in the formation of congressional ceremony, was not as relevant as the Old and New testaments of the Bible. Specifically, the Quran used in Rep. Ellison’s ceremony had historical relevance to say the least, published in London in 1764, having been originally owned and inscribed by Thomas Jefferson, and being one of the rarest pieces currently in the Library of Congress.
The American Civil Liberties Union addressed the issue by noting prior statements, which held that to support the presence of a religious text at ceremonial proceedings forces politicians to “involuntarily adhere to a religious text” and is both unconstitutional and intolerant. Ellison, a liberal Democrat himself, refuted such statements, saying that the use of Jefferson’s Quran pointedly “dates religious tolerance to the founders of our country.”
The election of Rep. Keith Ellison provides a much-needed addition to the increasingly diverse makeup of the U.S. Congress, and his decision to use a Quran in his inaugural oath was a welcome reminder of religion’s lawful and relevant place within our federal government.
