Quran oath controversy of the 110th United States Congress
In mid-November 2006, it was reported that Keith Ellison, the first Muslim ever elected to the United States Congress, would take his oath of office (as a representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district) with his hand on the Qur'an.
"[4] The controversy became more heated when Rep. Virgil Goode (R–VA) issued a letter to his constituents stating his view that Ellison's decision to use the Qur'an is a threat to "the values and beliefs traditional to the United States of America ... if American citizens don't wake up and adopt the Virgil Goode position on immigration there will likely be many more Muslims elected to office and demanding the use of the Koran.
[8] In his December 5, 2006 article on the subject Prager denied that he was promoting a de facto religious test, despite his position that Ellison should not be allowed to take his oath on the Qur'an.
CAIR's executive director said, "No one who holds such bigoted, intolerant and divisive views should be in a policymaking position at a taxpayer-funded institution that seeks to educate Americans about the destructive impact hatred has had, and continues to have, on every society".
[19] A new level of gravity came to the controversy when responding to "a flood of e-mails from constituents"[5] about Ellison's oath, fifth term Representative Virgil H. Goode, Jr. (R–VA) issued a letter on the matter.
Among those critical of Goode, were Reps. Bill Pascrell, Jr. (D–NJ), Jim Moran (D–VA), Mike Honda (D-CA), Rahm Emanuel (D–IL), and Nancy Pelosi (D–CA) plus Senators Bob Menendez (D–NJ) and Lindsey Graham (R–SC).
"[20][21] On January 3, 2007, The Washington Post announced that Ellison "will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson" lent to him by "the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress".
He said that using Jefferson's Qur'an makes a point: "It demonstrates that from the very beginning of our country, we had people who were visionary, who were religiously tolerant, who believed that knowledge and wisdom could be gleaned from any number of sources, including the Qurʻan.
Though the Library of Congress is directly across the street from the Capitol, Thomas Jefferson's Qur'an took fifteen minutes to arrive as it was brought through "a long, winding underground route via tunnels ... to protect the Quran from the elements".
[6] Once inside the Capitol, the Qur'an was placed in a rectangular box, and handled with a green felt wrapper when guards ran the book through security x-ray machines.
[6]On December 12, 2017, Alabama Senate candidate Roy Moore's spokesman, Ted Crockett, was interviewed on CNN, defending Moore's statement that Muslims should not be allowed to serve in the United States Congress based on the inaccurate belief that all incoming members of Congress are legally required to swear their oath of service on a Christian Bible.
The interviewer, Jake Tapper, informed Crockett that this is not true and incoming members may choose to swear their oath on a Hebrew Bible or a Qur'an as Ellison did.
[27][28] On January 27, 2021, video footage was published of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican congresswoman from Georgia and an avowed supporter of QAnon and other right-wing conspiracy theories, walking through the U.S. Capitol Building on February 22, 2019 (prior to her own election to Congress), arguing that Omar and Tlaib should be required to re-swear their oaths on a Christian Bible, or else they could not be considered "legitimate" members of Congress.
