Muslims Swearing on the Koran... Oh my!

This is an old post from my now-defunct Myspace blog. I'm going to post some of the older postings in reverse chronological order to put a little meat on the bones of this puppy.

Originally posted on Friday, December 08, 2006.

So the media is reporting that America's first Muslim congressman wants to take the oath of office on the Koran. (http://www.csmonitor.com/2006/1207/p01s03-uspo.html) And the conservative nutjobs are having a field day. This is a Christian country, after all. I mean, never mind that the Constitution includes a passage that reads: "The senators and representatives ... shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States." As the article notes, there's no real placing of the hand on any book for Members of Congress. Unlike the swearing in of the President, Members of Congress just raise one hand and state their oath. All the representative wanted to do was carry his Koran with him.

Interestingly absent from all this discussion of swearing is the absolute unChristianness of taking an oath at all. According to James 5:12, "But above all things, my brethren, swear not, neither by heaven, neither by the earth, neither by any other oath: but let your yea be yea; and your nay, nay; lest ye fall into condemnation." In other words, if you're a Christian, you're always under oath! Tell the truth! It's the height of hypocrisy that every day in this country well-meaning courts make people swear an oath on top of a book, the very taking of which indicates their lack of knowledge of what lurks inside of it. (To be fair, people are allowed to "affirm" the oath as well, which gets around the whole swearing bit...)