Swearing In Swearing

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Goring Religious Oxen: "...A perfect example of such hypocrisy is found in this column by Jan Markell at Worldview Weekend. She's quite upset that Minnesota has elected a Muslim to the US Congress, and even more upset that - gasp! - he's swearing his oath of office on a copy of the Quran instead of the Bible:

Ellison will be sworn in on a Koran. So now the Bible is equivalent to the Koran in the halls of Congress? Doesn't this then mean he is pledging allegiance to Islamic Law (Sharia) rather than our Constitution? Where is the outrage here?

Stunning, isn't it? If one of us secular humanist types suggested that a Christian, by swearing an oath on the Bible, was pledging allegiance to the Mosaic law rather than our Constitution, she would likely accuse us of religious bigotry. There is, of course, no requirement to place one's hand on any alleged holy book when being sworn in to office. But one simply cannot make a coherent and rational argument that using one holy book means swearing allegiance to that book over our Constitution while the other does not..."