Swear to God

As in most of his writing, my friend Dennis Prager here makes a lot of excellent points, this time regarding the demand of Keith Ellison to take his oath of office on the Koran rather than the Christian Bible.


On its face, that demand at first struck me as reasonable, but then I read Dennis' piece and I wonder. So before we get into his conclusions, let's look at his claims.

Dennis' basic argument seems to be twofold. First, he argues that since Mr. Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the United State Congress, is getting ready to swear to uphold American values, he ought to swear that oath on the book that contains those values. Second, he argues that Mr. Ellison's demand is profoundly arrogant, in that it disregards the decision of the American people that their representatives swear their oaths on the Bible; that, in fact, by insisting on the primacy of his opinion in the matter over that of Americans, Mr. Ellison is "undermin[ing] American civilization."


Let's leave aside the question of whether the Bible is the source of American values; that's a constant right-wing and fundamentalist claim that I am happy to entertain, but not here. Let's also leave aside the question of whether the American people "decided" on what book its officeholders were to swear their oaths; I rather suspect that practice was imported from England without much cogitation, so calling it a "decision" is misleading. I'd make a sizeable bet that a lot of people never really thought about swearing oaths on the Bible before now, so in that way Mr. Ellison has actually done us a service.

Moving right along, the idea that Mr. Ellison by his decision "undermines American civilization" strikes me as being alarmist at best. Yeah, he's doing something that many Americans find distasteful, but he's still swearing the oath, and the fact that he's holding a Koran at that moment makes him neither more nor less likely to "preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States" than, say, Tom DeLay.

Speaking of distasteful, if you ask me (and no one did), it's rather distasteful that Dennis at one point refers to the Koran as Keith Ellison's "favorite" book. We're not talking about a Stephen King thriller or a Harlequin romance here, or "Profiles in Courage" or the Federalist Papers, for that matter - we're talking about someone's idea of the Holy Scripture, and the fact that it isn't mine or Dennis' is irrelevant. The use of the word "favorite" connotes bedside reading, not the holy writ by which a person lives his life. Using that word may seem like a small thing, but I was an English teacher and I say that words have power. The word "favorite" in this context is an attempt to diminish the status of the Koran in Keith Ellison's life, and it won't do.


Which brings us to the purpose of swearing an oath on a book in the first place. Dennis asserts that public servants do so as a representation of exactly what they are swearing at that moment to uphold. Could be, but I always thought that it was a representation of the solemnity with which they regarded their oath, not the object of the oath. Even if we consider the public nature of the oath, it seems to me that the presence of the holy Book is not a way for the oath-taker to say "Here I stand swearing to uphold the values in this Book"; rather, he says "Here I stand swearing to uphold certain values, with a copy of what I hold dearest and most sacred in the world so you know I'm serious."

There's a little more to it than that, of course, as Dennis' Mein Kampf comparison makes clear (and by the way, watch what happens when people learn that Dennis drew a parallel between the Koran and Mein Kampf!). The choice of the book does indeed give us some notion of the person swearing the oath. A person may hold Mein Kampf most sacred, and seriously swear an oath in its presence, but it suggests that the person doing so will not represent us accurately or well, so we won't have it. Does Dennis really think that Keith Ellison plans to wage jihad against the United States? Is that what he thinks the presence of the Koran means? I doubt it; I suspect that in this case it's just Keith Ellison's way of showing how seriously he takes this oath. (With, yes, maybe a little public-relations awareness thrown in.)


Dennis' point about Jews in the past having sworn oaths on the New Testament is well-taken, I think, to an extent. If memory serves, though, few nonsecular Jews have served in government positions up to now, and those nonsecular Jews who did were mostly non-orthodox. This means, I suspect (and no doubt Dennis would be happy to correct me), that most Jews who have served in government office before now did not find taking a New Testament very difficult, the way an orthodox Jew probably would. I wonder what Joe Lieberman has to say on the subject, and what book he used? If it was a Christian Bible, well and good; Dennis has made his point.

As for the probability that Mormon officeholders did not swear on the Book of Moroni, nor secular ones on Voltaire or the New York Times editorial section (a nice dig at liberalism there), nor Scientologists on Dianetics, those objections seem irrelevant to me. Mormons hold the Christian Bible sacred, though not as much as the Book of Moroni, so swearing on the Christian Bible should not give them any problems in the matter of sacred oaths (although the same could possibly be said for Muslims like Mr. Ellison, who also hold the Christian Bible sacred, so that's not such a powerful statement after all). The point about Scientologists and Dianetics is probably true, though we have had no test cases yet. As for the stuff about secularists and the New York Times, that's mere rhetoric - no one, however liberal, considers the Times editorial section to be holy writ, no matter how amusing it may be to say so.


Having said all that, the last part of Dennis' remarks are pretty telling, if you ask me. Arguing, as some do, that allowing Mr. Ellison to swear on the Koran will pacify the Muslim world is naive at best, and we do indeed want to avoid any damage to American unity. It may also be true that allowing Mr. Ellison to swear on the Koran will embolden Muslim extremists in their goal of Islamicizing America.

My last question, therefore, is this: If in fact Muslim extremists would be emboldened by such a move, is that a reason to forbid it? Why in the heck should America make a decision about Mr. Ellison's choice of book, or any other decision, based on whether or not a bunch of thugs might get a boost out of it? Let's decide whether Mr. Ellison can swear on the Koran for our own reasons, not out of fear that Osama bin Laden might like it; that's the argument George W. Bush and his boys made just before the last election, that Muslim terrorists were trying to influence American electoral politics. The American people rejected that argument then, and ought to reject it now.

So should Mr. Ellison be allowed to swear on the Koran or not? Dennis suggests it would undermine American unity. If that's so, maybe we can find a way to mitigate that result. Suppose, for instance, we said that Mr. Ellison is allowed to swear on the Koran as a demonstration of the ongoing strength of that fundamental American value, freedom of religion. I bet all Americans can unify behind that value, except maybe a few fundamentalist lunatics who want all Congressmen to swear an oath of allegiance to Christ, and I don't much care what they think anyway, any more than Dennis does.

It would be a delicate balancing act, but America has been balancing various demands ever since it was founded. That's one of the results when you decide you don't want a king.


Benshlomo says, Democracy is complicated, you better believe it.