Md. Fakrul Islam Chowdhury of DOT :
On January 3, 2019, The House SpeakerNancy Pelosi swore in RashidaTlaib, using the Quran instead of a Bible during the 116th Congress swearing in ceremony.
Tlaib, one of the first two women from Muslim origin to be elected in the Congress, however, recently tweeted to correct the widely spread erroneous report in the media that she took oath placing her hand on a Thomas Jefferson’s 1734 English translation of the Quran.
“I used my own *personal Quran* that my best friend of 25 years gifted me to use for the ceremonial swear in (basically a photo with Speaker Pelosi).
*Note: I did not use Jefferson’s Quran as reported. I wanted it to be more personal (and my own).” Tlaib tweeted on January 5th.
Tlaib, is not the first Muslim to be sworn in with a Quran though.In January 2007, the first Muslim member of Congress Democrat Keith Ellison took his oath using the the English translation of the Qur’an owned by Thomas Jefferson for the swearing-in ceremony.
In ninth-century England, the altar of a church often served as the courtroom for oaths as there were no dedicated governmental centers. It is widely accepted that the tradition of using the Bible in oath-taking most likely have it origin there.
In 2013, TulsiGabbard became the first Hindu member of Congress and swore her oath placing her hand on the Bhagavad Gita.
KrystenSinema used a law book that contained both the U.S.’s and Arizona’s constitutions while taking her oath as the Democratic senator from Arizon. Sinema is the only person in the Senate to state that she is “religiously unaffiliated.”
Although George Washington, started the tradition of placing the left hand, as it is closer to the heart, on a Bible while taking oath not all US presidents followed this tradition.
There are many historical examples of the Bible being absent from swearing-in ceremonies. President John Quincy Adams, and Franklin Pierce did not swear on the Bible. Both swore on a book of law, making their intentions of swearing on the constitution evident. Lyndon B. Johnson also for example, was sworn in on a Roman Catholic missal on Air Force One. When President William McKinley was assassinated in 1901, Vice President Theodore Roosevelt took his oath of office without any oath-object.
A kindle was used in back In 2014, by Suzi Levine, the then-incoming ambassador to Switzerland and Liechtenstein when she took her oath.
The Autobiography of Malcolm X was used by Mariah Parker to swear in on in 2018 while she took office as Athens-Clarke County commissioner in Georgia.
The United States Constitution makes no requirement that the Bible or any other religious text or indeed any text or object is required to take oath to an office. In the Article VI, Clause 3 of the Constitution it is stated that senators and representatives require to “be bound by Oath or Affirmation” to support the Constitution.
However, the clause continues, “no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.”
Which basically means that as long as one affirms the Constitution, one can leave religion out entirely when it comes to taking oaths.
“Mr. Ellison, or anyone else, could have also used a comic book, a lesser Shakespeare play or nothing at all”,Jonah Engel Bromwich, in an article published in New York Times on December 13, 2017 wrote.
The writer is Consulting Editor, Amader Notun Shomoy