He's a representative from Minnesota (MN-5). It's a rep from Virginia (Goode) who was raising a stink about it.
You may think the Jihadist Founding Father line is a joke, but at the Corner irony was long ago hanged, beheaded, and buried in a mass grave:
Jefferson's Koran [James S. Robbins]- The Bashaw of Tripoli's justification for war on American trading ships in the Mediterranean two hundred years ago, according to Thomas Jefferson, was that "it was founded on the Laws of the Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that all nations who should not have acknowledged their authority were sinners, that it was their right and duty to make war upon them wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners." By all means let Keith Ellison swear in using Jefferson's Koran, maybe afterwards he can look up the passages that discuss smiting the infidels at the neck and make great slaughter among them. Probably underlined.
I would like to see the next presidential race be between him and the other freshman Minnesota representative. Enough of these proxy wars.
It is clever, although I'm under the impression this is all photo-op stuff anyhow, since the hand-on-bible bit is not required nor part of the ceremony. I'll bet Jefferson's is the English translation, which I think is not authoritative or sacred anyway. Islam more like Judaism in this. There is no doctrine of inerrancy, sacrilizing a translation, like in (some) Protestant Christianity.
Can you really request any copy of your sacred book you want?
I want to be sworn in on Mark Twain's copy of The Book of Mormon.
If you can get ahold of it, sure. The 'sacred book' bit is entirely unofficial, as IDP says.
I'm a bad person for wondering, now, if Adolf Hitler owned a Torah.
Actually, I've spent an embarrassing amount of time bopping around to figure out whether Twain owned one, and if so, where it is now. Conclusion: there's a lot of material in research libraries that hasn't gone up online yet.
Maybe Goode would prefer he be signed in on Sayyid Qutb's copy of the Bible.
Ellison should challenge Virgil Goode to a duel next, that'd show 'em!
You would think that the wingers would start screaming about the Library of Congress Special Collections staff being so nakedly partisan as to allow the book to be used. If a Republican Black Muslim Congressman wanted to be sworn in on Jefferson's Koran, would the collection curator be so eager to lend it out? Hmm?
I'm a bad person for wondering, now, if Adolf Hitler owned a Torah.
In a manner of speaking yes. Thousands were assembled, to be part of a kind of Museum of European Jewry, in Vienna. Thinking of the circumstances of their acquisition makes my hair stand on end. They were distributed to congregations, many in the United States, after the war. Our synagogue has one.
This is the best mainstream response I've seen on the controversy:
It is interesting to consider what the founders of our Constitution might have said about the election of Keith Ellison to Congress, the first Muslim to hold such a position.
[...]
It turns out that our constitutional founders explicitly considered the possibility of Muslim officeholders - and explicitly welcomed it.Some early opponents of the Constitution attacked it for Article VI, which prohibits religious tests for national office, precisely on the ground that it made room for Muslims to become lawmakers....The issue came up most directly in the North Carolina ratifying convention of 1788. One speaker asked whether the absence of religious tests might allow "Pagans, Deists, and Mahometans [to] come among us." To which James Iredell, a fervent supporter of the Constitution and later a Supreme Court justice, replied: "How is it possible to exclude any set of men" from office, "without taking away that principle of religious freedom which we ourselves so warmly contend for?"Elsewhere, a newspaper article complained that the Constitution could lead to "Mahometans, who ridicule the doctrine of the Trinity" becoming our lawmakers - along with "Quakers, who... make the blacks saucy," and Jews, who might order Americans to rebuild Jerusalem. [...]The Constitution's defenders, including a number of Christian ministers, responded to such attacks [...] James Madison insisted that any law favoring one religious group over others "degrades from the equal rank of Citizens all those whose opinions in Religion do not bend to those of the Legislative authority."
I'm in UR Congress, making UR Lawz.
You can get saucy blacks without being a Quaker these days, JM.
man, that line about making the blacks saucy is too funny.
and that joke about jews ordering america to rebuild jerusalem, too.
But only the saucy blacks that have been made so by Quakers. If I become a Quaker, then I hold the power of transformation!
Have you asked the blacks if they want to be saucy? Did you think of that?
Oh, hey, secret powers! I'm going to have to get to work on that.
i just don't know what kind of sauce you're going to get starting with oatmeal. might not be so highly flavored.
Goodness, I previewed and everything. The correct link for the op-ed from which those quotations were drawn.
With blacks, you want a ever-so-slight tan sauce, for contrast.
No, no. You put the sauce *on* the oatmeal and mix it all in. Teh yum.
5: And, dang, no place to post this in reply:
Deuteronomy:
17.2 If there be found among you, within any of thy gates which the LORD thy God giveth thee, man or woman, that hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the LORD thy God, in transgressing his covenant,
17. 3 And hath gone and served other gods, and worshipped them, either the sun, or moon, or any of the host of heaven, which I have not commanded
17.4 And it be told thee, and thou hast heard of it, and enquired diligently, and, behold, it be true, and the thing certain, that such abomination is wrought in Israel:
17.5 Then shalt thou bring forth that man or that woman, which have committed that wicked thing, unto thy gates, even that man or that woman, and shalt stone them with stones, till they die.
Take that, you ship-wrecking Mahometans! And Buddhists. And Wiccans. And Unitarians. And teh gays. And Bloggers. And anyone who lights a fire on Sunday or offers a blemished goat [or goatfucker] as a sacrifice.
Or the lime in the coconut, and mix it all up.
I think the more many people knew about the founders, the less they'd like them. Old story.
At the Minnesota State Capitol there's a Civil War battleflag captured by the 1st Minnesota regiment from the 26th Virginia regiment. Virginia wants it back, but Jesse Ventura said they's have to fight for it. Ellison should pose with the flag and send it to Goode as a peace offering.
Cutting it up into a series of commemorative handkerchiefs and returning them used would be inflammatory, I suppose.
Jesse Ventura said they's have to fight for it.
This is awesome.
to be part of a kind of Museum of European Jewry, in Vienna.
There's a synagogue in Rhodes that's pretty much that. The island had had a thriving Jewish community from the time of the Inquisition (when they'd been booted out of Spain) until the Nazis came along. Those who didn't or couldn't flee in time got sent to Auschwitz.
There's a palpable sense of absence that's really haunting. (And I appreciated that the memorial plaque for the families killed in Auschwitz didn't mince words about how awful that was.)
This is awesome.
Jesse had his moments. I can't help thinking that had he a different upbringing, he might have done rather more for American civic life.
Cutting it up into a series of commemorative handkerchiefs
The Ohio State Capital had a whole wall of them behind glass when I was a kid in the 'sixties. They were already pretty tattered, and probably were the day they were captured.
I sure wouldn't want them sent back.
If Ellison is trying to imply that Jefferson's ownership of a Koran means he was some sort of closeted Muslim, that's pretty silly. Owning a book doesn't mean you believe what's written in it.
39 -- huh? Where do you get that Ellison is saying Jefferson was Muslim? It's pretty broadly known among people who have taken 9th grade American History that he was deist. Though the National Review writer seems to be having some trouble with it.
Ellison was just trying to make a lot of people look like idiots, GB, and he was pretty successful.
If, on the other hand, Ellison was trying to imply that Jefferson's owning a Koran means he was preternaturally aware of the Impending Terrorist Threat, then all I can way is wow. That Jefferson guy was damn smart.
43: So smart, in fact, that he beat back the Muslim Peril for over 200 years.
39 - Huh? Jefferson wrote that he wanted Virginia's freedom of religion laws to extend "the mantle of its protection [to] the Jew and the Gentile, the Christian and Mohammedan, the Hindoo and Infidel of every denomination." I think that is the not-terribly-subtle message that Ellison is trying to get across, rather than some What If? comic about Jefferson being a Hassamite plant.
C'mon, people. Ellison is sending a message to his fellow sleeper cell agents around the country and jihadists around the world that, by owning a copy of the Koran, Thomas Jefferson was explicitly authorizing a Mahometan takeover of the United States.
Duh.
Is he going to blink out an attack signal or simply hand a message off to the Brotherhood of Islamofascist Mutants?
As you know Bob, Jefferson was a crypto-Hindoo.
Oh no, what if Ellison means to send the message that TJ was, in fact, Mohammed? The head reels at the theological implications of such a gesture!
50: A recurring character at Standpipe's blog. It's a line people use to flag awkward exposition in fiction -- you come into the middle of the story, and then one character launches into a full explanation of what's going on to another character who doesn't need it: "As you know, Bob, we're on a secret mission to assassinate Hitler..."
(If you knew that, I feel silly now.)
No, I sort of read it that way, so I must have absorbed the practice without having it spelled out, but wasn't quite sure.
54: At *whose* blog? I thought SB's blog was a joke.
As you know Bob, is an SF phrase for a crudely-done infodump (which is also an SF term, though spreading).
56: Returning yet again to Standpipe's blog, all I meant was that I was explaining a joke.
57: I'd forgotten, if I ever knew, that it was an SF specific term, but I suppose that is the context I heard it in originally. You just aren't geeky enough, IDP.
56 rules. It is the finest post I have read all day.
As I say, I thought I recognised the tone, just wasn't sure. And it may be of longer standing than that. There's an extended cartoon in a Monte Python about a dragon who can't get chicks because of his breath. Another dragon is given a smarmy American friendly voice to say "Say, Bob, whats the matter?" Also in those egregious "Natural male enhancement" ads of a couple of years ago. "Bob" seems to be the natural name given to anyone addressed in that kind of voice, and this practice could well go back some time.
Good night you guys -- I am off to Mexico for a couple of days, early in the morning. See you soon.
Anyone who wants a Tulumian postcard is invited to send their mailing address to anacreon in the domain of gmail, but do so within the next 20 or so minutes because this Epicurean is not checking his mail in the morning.
"their" s/b "his or her" of course.
I thought we'd decided that "they" is a perfectly good ungendered third-person singular.
I'm not sure what the referent is for "we" in 68.
Clown fought Google, and Google won. Clown fought Google, and Google won.
Good night, Clown; have a safe trip. And good night, Unfogged.
69: I thought that the discussion I'm remembering was here, but maybe not. In any case, it convinced me, at least as a theoretically matter. I still find it hard to use in my own writing.
Sure, but what did she know about how to write?
This is my favorite usage of singular "their."
Apparently Clownæ's new job involves going down to Mexico and kicking ass.
Fight the good fight, Clownæ! Show those Mexicans what's what!
One would think that with the promise of 72 virgins, members of congress would be lining up to convert to Islam.