What I wrote at Lib Dem Voice

January 04, 2007

Sale of the (18th) Century

You’re the first elected Muslim congressman in the USA. You want to swear your oath of office using the Quran. But you want to deflect the inevitable reactionary criticism that will follow. What do you do?

Well, Minnesotan Democrat Keith Ellison has come up with an ingenious solution, as reported by IndianMuslims.info:
When Keith Ellison takes his individual ceremonial oath of office today (4th of Jan), it is to be with one hand upon Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Quran.

Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, requested to take the oath upon Jefferson’s personal copy of George Sale’s 1734 translation of the Koran, commonly called the Alcoran of Mohammed is published in London in 1764.

The two-volume work, which resides in the Library of Congress’ Rare Book and Special Collections Division, is one of nearly 6,500 titles sold to Congress by Jefferson in 1815 to replace the Congressional Library that had been destroyed when the British burned the Capitol during the War of 1812.

2 comments:

Liberal Polemic said...

Genuinely ingenious!

One can question neither his patriotism nor his faith.

However, my wife - who is a museum curator - might question his touching the rare work, unless he wears gloves or uses a sterile wipe fist.

Duncan Borrowman said...

I posted about this yesterday (well in the small hours this morning) with some more interesting links (including one to the chief of the rare books and special collections section at the Library of Congress)
http://duncanborrowman.blogspot.com/2007/01/news-from-hill.html