Muslims in Congress shine a bright light on separation issues
This is one of the most important concepts for people professing the removal of church-state separation to understand: the danger of letting religious rather than constitutional law be the guiding force of the land.
The perfect example of transference regarding this issue, is exemplified by the following quote by Jan Markell (of Worldview Weekend) about the first Muslim to hold public office.
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?
Ed Brayton puts the rubber band on the other claw and throws the quote right back at her.
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.
On the other hand, it’s entirely possible that for someone like Markell, swearing an oath on the Bible does mean pledging allegiance to Biblical law over the Constitution. And that’s the most frightening possibility imaginable. That would mean theocracy rather than liberal democracy and it would mean the end of all notions of liberty.
Of course, for most fundamentalists we should enforce Biblical law over Constitutional law, but the frightening consequences of such a society should be apparent enough to all rational-minded people, that educating the rest of society on these issues should be of utmost importance.
