By now, I’m sure you know about Keith Ellison, the first openly-Muslim candidate elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. His religion should merely be an historical footnote, if it is remembered at all. It probably shouldn’t be remembered, because it is a non-event. It’s just a reflection of the religious diversity that makes this country great. Conservatives are always telling us that this is the greatest country in the world, after all. Isn’t this an example of why?

In these bleak days since 9/11, when America seems determined to turn its back on the principles that made it great, I am proud to see that a predominantly non-Muslim district could look beyond the easy stereotyping and vote for the man they truly thought was best qualified. There is hope for this country yet. We aren’t all a horde of babbling, reactionary, hate-spewing ignoramuses.

Well, not all of us, anyway.

You’ve probably heard that Ellison wants to swear his oath of office on the Koran instead of the Bible. This is another non-event.

Well, not to all of us, anyway.

When this story broke a few days ago, several micro-brained fundie leaders pounced on it, eager to grab headlines across the country, so their equally micro-brained followers could see what wonderful defenders of Christianity they are.

What I would truly love to know is how many Americans are genuinely disturbed by Ellison exercising his First Amendment right to freedom of religion. Is the controversy of these last few days just a couple of fundie pinheads with a national audience? Just a few obnoxious “defenders of this ‘Christian Nation’” beating their chests in a puffed-up threat gesture, just like the primate ancestors that they vehemently deny they have?

I’d like to think that the village idiot is not representative of the rest of the town’s residents.

One particularly loud idiot is Dennis Prager, of World Nut Daily. He has written a ridiculous diatribe wherein he somehow attempts to make the case that Ellison should not be allowed to swear an oath on his (Ellison’s) holy book. Instead, Ellison should have to swear an oath on Prager’s holy book (the Bible). Only in Fundie-land does that even remotely sound logical.

Rather than take the time myself to rip Prager a new one, I would instead like to direct your attention to Fundie Watch. You’ll recognize the name from my Blogroll. It’s one of the anti-fundie blogs that I recommend you visit on a regular basis. The Watcher takes great delight in shredding fundie nonsense, and I take great delight in reading it. So please, go over there now and read it.

My Comments

If you read the comments on his post, you’ll see that I made one over there too. I thought I made a few good points, if I do say so myself. Just for fun (or laziness, what do you expect from free entertainment?), I’ve decided to reprint part of my comments here as well. To quote me:

Watcher, excellent post. I’ve been mulling this topic over all weekend, trying to come up with a post for my own blog. You’ve done a more thorough trouncing of this guy than I could.

And how come his argument is basically that he finds it “hard to imagine?”

You’ve hit one of the core problems with fundies. They’re imagination-impaired. They can’t wrap their puny brains around big concepts. That’s why they can’t accept the fact of evolution. They can’t imagine anything that isn’t spelled out for them in the Bible. In fact, many fundies have trouble with any form of imagination (e.g., they’re afraid of Harry Potter, the Teletubbies, SpongeBob, etc.). What a scary little world they must live in.

Tell me, Dennis, do you base all your theories on what’s hard for you to imagine, or do you accidentally let some facts slip in once in a while?

Heavens no! If he let any facts slip in, they’d have to take away his fundie-card!

I’ve always been troubled by this whole swearing on the Bible thing. Where did that come from? I suspect it’s an ancient custom that got carried into the U.S. Congress by momentum instead of thought.

Presumably, the idea is that if you swear an oath to God, you quiver in your boots about breaking the oath. Hellfire and eternal damnation are supposed to be too high a price to pay for a minor benefit today. Apparently that doesn’t work. All you have to do is look at all of the conservative, God-fearing Republicans who have completely savaged their oath of office lately.

If you put your hand on any text, it should be the Constitution. That is, after all, what you are swearing to uphold and protect.

(One of the other commenters, a fellow named Harry Sufehmi, said this):

I thought there’s a separation between state and religion in America? Perhaps I’m wrong

Anyway, in Indonesia, THE country of MUSLIMS EXTREMISTS, there’s no problem whatsoever if Christian statesmen choose to swear their oath under the Bible. Or Buddhist or others under their own holy book. Not even one [person] will complain. Not even one [person] will [THINK] “Hell, this is an outrage!”

You can imagine our surprise to read the news that [in] America—the country of freedom, where state is separated from religion—there’s an UPROAR when a statesman wishes to swear his oath under his own holy book.

After a stunned silence, there [was] hysterical laughter all around.

America, don’t allow this to happen. It’s making you the joke of the world

(To which I wrote):

Harry Sufehmi, I’m sorry to disappoint you. America has some stellar founding principles, but they’re only as good as the people who implement them. Unfortunately, America was founded primarily by religious nut-jobs who were so extreme they got booted out of Europe.

Those people are still with us today, and they are making things unpleasant for the rest of us.

It may be an historical accident that we ended up with such a great Constitution. We had just thrown off the shackles of tyranny, so we wrote a document that was designed to prevent a new tyranny from forming in its place. I think the only reason it was ratified is that everyone was terrified that the horrible experience that they had just gone through would be repeated.

In the 18th century, we went through a horrible experience and quickly ratified laws out of fear. By luck or intellect (take your pick), they were great laws. In the 21st century, we went through a horrible experience (9/11) and quickly ratified laws out of fear. Sadly, contemporary American citizens are not in the same league as our forbears. Where they granted themselves freedom, we willfully surrendered it.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 4th, 2006 at 3:02 am and is filed under Politics, Church and State. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.