Lawmaker to use Quran for taking oath of office

WASHINGTON – As he prepares to become the first Muslim in Congress, Rep.-elect Keith Ellison says the Constitution gives him the right to take the oath of office on the Quran, and that’s what he intends to do Jan. 4.

The Minnesota Democrat’s decision is stirring a debate among academicians and conservatives, with some saying it’s appropriate to take an oath of office only on the Bible.

“Mr. Ellison, America, not you, decides on what book its public servants take their oath,” radio talk-show host and author Dennis Prager wrote in a column this week. He said American Jews routinely had taken their oaths on the Bible, even though they didn’t believe in the New Testament, and that if Ellison refused to do so, “don’t serve in Congress.”

Eugene Volokh, a professor of law at the University of California at Los Angeles, said the Constitution authorized people not to swear their oaths at all, protecting atheists and agnostics.

“Why would Muslims and others not be equally protected?” he wrote in National Review Online. Volokh noted that two former presidents – Franklin Pierce and Herbert Hoover – didn’t swear their oaths but chose to affirm them.

Ellison, who couldn’t be reached for comment Thursday, defended his plan to use the Quran, Islam’s holy book, in an interview with Abdi Aynte, a reporter from Minneapolis who writes for Minnesota Monitor.

“The Constitution guarantees for everyone to take the oath of office on whichever book they prefer,” Ellison was quoted as saying. “And that’s what the freedom of religion is all about.”

Taking an oath on the Quran isn’t unprecedented.

In 1999, the News-India Times reported that Osman Siddique, a Virginia businessman of Bangladeshi origin, used the Quran to take the oath when he became the U.S. ambassador to Fiji and three other Pacific nations: Nauru, Tonga and Tuvalu. He took the oath on the Bible and the Quran, with the Quran on top, the newspaper reported.