Swearing on the Koran: Beyond symbolism

Townhall ^ | December 8, 2006 | Diana West

[texas_mrs]

cut and paste: The oath of office that Ellison plans to take with his Koran binds members of Congress to uphold the constitutional law of the land. Islam, which recognizes no separation between religion and politics, calls for loyalty to sharia, or Islamic law, over any “manmade” law, which would include our constitution.

Given Ellison’s associations with Islamic groups, including CAIR, NAIF, and American Open University (known to law enforcement as “Wahabbi Online,” according to WorldNetDaily.com), members of which have openly supported sharia, this swearing-in ceremony suddenly takes on an alarming significance that is by no means just symbolic.

[darkwing104]

Means nothing. A muslim will still lie to nonbelievers and will ignore the needs of the country in the favor of his Islamic brethren.

[ASOC]

Story link requires login.

IIRC, this fellow was to use no book, as is also the custom, at his swearing in. I am willing to bet he works "Allah" into the swearing in ceremony somehow.

[Issaquahking]

How many torpedo's will it take from TROP to wake America up???







"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached."


Didn't anybody listen???

[stubernx98]

If he swears in using the Koran, then he can be killed because he would have violated the Islam law by taking an oath to support the consitiution over Islam. Heh Heh

[ryan71]

CAIR?

How the hell did this guy get elected? What the hell are people thinking?

And Dennis Prager is right. This country was established on values from the Bible. Without those values, we wouldn't be here.

[Cacique]

btt

[snarks_when_bored]

If he swears in using the Koran, then he can be killed because he would have violated the Islam law by taking an oath to support the consitiution over Islam. Heh Heh

Good point, Sir.

[marvlus]

He got elected in Minnesota. I'm really disappointed in the people of Minnesota which is my birthplace, and the land of my Nordic ancestors. Why has this happened - Minnesota freepers?

[newgeezer]

Story link requires login.

Here's a link to the same story on another site.

[texas_mrs]

I am sorry, forgot I had to log into the site. Here is the entire article:

Give pundit Dennis Prager points for disputing a decision by newly elected Rep. Keith Ellison, D-Minn., the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress, to use a Koran at his private Capitol Hill swearing-in ceremony next month.

I can’t say I subscribe to Prager’s logic — and that goes for both his position that it should be the Bible or bust at private swearing-in ceremonies, and his amended notion that the Koran is OK by him so long as the Bible is there, too. Still, I applaud him for trying to construct an argument, however flawed, around what I interpret to be a more visceral reaction against the symbolic introduction of the Koran into the institutions of American government.

What do I mean by visceral? For starters, bear in mind what Debra Burlingame reminded us of recently in an op-ed decrying the “grievance theater” of the so-called flying imams from the North American Imam Federation (NAIF) who were ejected from a US Airways flight for threatening behavior: The words “Allahu akbar” (Arabic for “Allah is Great”) were the last words heard by passengers plunging to their deaths on Flight 93 as they saved the U.S. Capitol from probable destruction on Sept. 11. They will almost certainly be the last words at Ellison’s swearing-in ceremony cum Koran to ring out under that same Capitol dome. “Visceral” describes the queasy reaction to the thought of this. Our multicultural, politically correct education tries to confound the connection, but it’s still there.

Or is it? Pundits on the left and right have denounced Prager for being religiously intolerant — as though Islam were just a simple matter of religious inspiration sans totalitarian designs. Those who persist in giving ecumenical cover to imperial Islam are the useful fools of our age.

Then there are the rope-sellers, or propaganda peddlers, such the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations. CAIR — which, by the way, supported Ellison’s congressional campaign (and now supports the “flying imams”) — entered the Koran controversy not just to debate Prager’s position, but to try to penalize him for it by demanding he be booted from the council of the federally funded Holocaust Memorial Museum.

As CAIR put it in a letter to the council, “No one who holds such bigoted, intolerant and divisive views should be in a policy-making position at a taxpayer-funded institution that seeks to educate Americans about the destructive impact hatred has had, and continues to have, on every society.”

This is rich. Could CAIR possibly be referring to the “destructive impact” of Islam’s doctrinal hatred of Jews and other infidels, which to this day curdles Friday sermons at mosques around the world? Or to the “destructive impact” of its Hamas pals’ charter, which, quoting sacred Islamic sources, calls for the destruction of Israel? Not a chance. In light of CAIR’s call for Prager’s head, I mean, seat on the Holocaust council, it’s worth noting that the Nazi murder of 6 million Jews — the core concern of the Holocaust council, after all — was enthusiastically supported by many Muslims, most notoriously by the grand mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini.

Somehow, this adds a dizzying irony to the attempt by CAIR, a Muslim advocacy group, to unseat Prager, a Jew, from the blooming Holocaust council. So, too, as a politically correct sidelight, does the fact that the Holocaust Museum itself totally ignores the Muslim role in the Holocaust. (In fact, as Chuck Morse and Carol Greenwald have pointed out in The Washington Times, the museum does not even mention al-Husseini, whose entry in the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust takes up more pages than anyone’s but Hitler.)

The CAIR letter continued: “As a presidential appointee, Prager’s continued presence on the council would send a negative message to Muslims worldwide about America’s commitment to religious tolerance.” Please. America’s commitment to religious tolerance — freedom, actually — is of no concern to “Muslims worldwide” as long as Islam itself is supremacist in its institutional degradation of non-Muslim peoples.

Such supremacism may or may not be at the root of Prager’s concerns. Certainly, it should be. But there is something else. The oath of office that Ellison plans to take with his Koran binds members of Congress to uphold the constitutional law of the land. Islam, which recognizes no separation between religion and politics, calls for loyalty to sharia, or Islamic law, over any “manmade” law, which would include our constitution.

Given Ellison’s associations with Islamic groups, including CAIR, NAIF, and American Open University (known to law enforcement as “Wahabbi Online,” according to WorldNetDaily.com), members of which have openly supported sharia, this swearing-in ceremony suddenly takes on an alarming significance that is by no means just symbolic.

Copyright 2006, Newspaper Enterprise Assn.

[darkwing104]

Thanks.

[Gorzaloon]

Hahaha, Swearing an oath on the Book Of True Lies.

[FarRightFanatic]

Minnesota is the ONE state that Reagan didn't carry in 1984. Not much has changed since then. Many of the people here are very liberal, especially in the district that elected Ellison. Someone said that you could consider it the Berkley of MN.

[NOLA_homebrewer]

I never really cared much for sworn oaths, it implies that it has more meaning or more truthfulness than my word alone which I find offensive.

However, I understand the concept, swearing on something that you hold dear whether its a religious icon, your mother's grave, her eyes, a plate of her chocolate chip cookies, whatever.

Would it really be better and make people happy if this congressman-to-be swore on something that had no particular significance to him such as the yellow pages, a C++ GUI users programming guide, a christian bible, etc?

[Nathan Zachary]

It means alot. He's swearing on the Koran, and that means he's swearing to uphold the Koran as it is seen to him as superior to anything else, including the constitution.

Another nail in the Nations coffin...

[Nathan Zachary]

"I am willing to bet he works "Allah" into the swearing in ceremony somehow."

Of course. He'll say Allah means god, Which is a lie. But media does it all the time so nobody will know any better. Allah is the NAME of thier 'ilah'(god). But nobody, especially media reads the Koran which says this 52 times.

[Nathan Zachary]

Not a good point. He's swearing on the Koran, which is superior to the constitution in his mind. He will only uphold parts of the constitution which agree with the Koran.

[alloysteel]

Why is Shari'a law NOT just another form of man-made law?

None of it is based in the Decalogue, and we know Moses came striding down from the mountain bearing these tablets. Yet the entire world of Islam does not recognize this code of law, because it is "old", that is, that was just some traditon that was lying around before the Prophet Mohammed developed schizophrenic symptoms and began listening to the voices in his head.

And since these voices were OBVIOUSLY of supernatural origin, then they had to be the best of all authority.

Clearly, that supersedes any other source or authority.

Even if the source that Mohammed listened to was Ahriman.

[darkwing104]

To anyone who isn't muslim his swearing-in on a Koran means nothing. It's a farce, no better than an atheist swearing on a bible.