El Corán y el calefón

Hace unos días comentaba por acá sobre el representante Keith Ellison, demócrata de Minnesota, el primer musulmán electo al Congreso de los EEUU y el revuelo que se armó por su decisión de jurar sobre el Corán en lugar de la Biblia tradicional. Es interesante notar que en una muy inteligente movida de relaciones públicas anunció que va a jurar sobre un Corán que perteneció a Thomas Jefferson.

Muy interesante columna en The American Thinker sobre la evolución del juramento de asunción en EEUU. Yo me quedo con esto:

At least one issue is clear: Mr. Ellison has a perfect right to refuse to swear on the Bible. It is not part of our law but merely a custom, one which we can hardly expect a Muslim or atheist to follow. Similarly, like any Quaker, he would seem to have the right to decline to swear and to 'affirm' instead.

However, several other questions remain. They derive from the fact that, for the first time in U.S. history, we have within our citizenry adherents of a religion which, at least in the eyes of some fraction of its believers, professes unremitting warfare against the United States as one of its religious goals. This raises the question of whether Mr. Elliot has a right to swear or affirm at all-whether, as a Muslim, he might feel compelled to betray any oath to the U. S. government if he perceives it to conflict with the goals of Islam.

This would seem to depend on what branch of Islam Mr. Elliot belongs to. Fundamentalist Muslims, citing passages in the Quran and Haditha, believe that Islam must be at war with all other religions and non-religious governments until it has brought the whole world under its sway. They also believe that Muslims are subject to no civil law other than Islamic Sharia. On the other hand, other Muslims feel no such conflict with U.S. laws, largely because they ignore certain parts of Islamic doctrine which they find uncomfortable.