By JT Santana | jtwb768
A Qur’an Is Not a Constitutional Emergency
There is a peculiar kind of American political outrage that requires people to defend the Constitution without consulting it. A Muslim wins an election, the possibility of a Qur’an appears in a swearing-in discussion, and suddenly a routine feature of religious liberty gets treated like evidence of a national takeover. The actual constitutional requirement receives less attention than the cover of the book. That reversal deserves scrutiny, particularly from people who present themselves as guardians of the founding document.
The immediate occasion is Abdul El-Sayed’s election in Michigan. Reuters reported on November 4, 2026, that he had won the state’s open Senate seat, according to media projections, becoming the first Muslim elected to that chamber (Layne, 2026). Election, admission to office, and a ceremonial photograph are separate events. As of this article’s November 12 preparation, his prospective Senate oath must not be described as something he has already taken.
There is another necessary limit: the sources reviewed for this article do not establish his final choice of an oath book. Claims that he has already become the first senator sworn in on a Qur’an, or that a particular official must hold that book, run ahead of the verified record. His right to choose a Qur’an does not depend on those claims becoming true. The constitutional argument remains sound without embellishing the news.
The wider hostility is not an invention. Associated Press reporting described Donald Trump calling El-Sayed a “jihadist” during the campaign and invoking September 11 (Associated Press, 2026). That documented rhetoric warrants criticism in its own right. It does not justify attributing an identical reaction to every Republican or treating every social media post as an official party position.
The question is whether an elected Muslim is entitled to participate in public life without surrendering a visible expression of faith. My answer is yes, under the same standard that protects a Christian with a Bible, a Jewish official with Hebrew scripture, a Hindu with the Bhagavad Gita, or a person who chooses no religious object. Equal citizenship loses its meaning when the majority reserves a right for itself and calls the same conduct threatening when someone else exercises it.
American oath ceremonies already include legal volumes, religious texts, family objects, and a Captain America shield. Those examples do not make every ceremony identical, and accuracy requires attention to their differences. They do establish that the Bible is not the nation’s mandatory admission ticket. Before anyone announces the republic’s collapse over a book, the republic’s governing rules deserve a reading.
What the Constitution Actually Requires
Article VI links public service to an oath or affirmation supporting the Constitution and prohibits a religious test for federal office. It does not prescribe a Bible, identify an approved denomination, or require an incoming official to adopt Christianity. These are features of the constitutional text, not concessions recently negotiated for a particular candidate (National Archives, n.d.). An argument that Muslims are categorically ineligible for federal office collides with that text at the starting point.
The Senate’s present oath commits a member to constitutional allegiance and faithful performance of official duties. The Senate’s own explanation describes an oath shaped by nineteenth-century revisions, including the Civil War period. Its operative commitments concern the office and the country, not adherence to a preferred scripture (U.S. Senate, n.d.-a). A book can communicate the personal seriousness of the promise without changing the promise’s public object.
Consider the distinction in ordinary terms. A Christian official may regard a family Bible as the most solemn object available; a Muslim may regard the Qur’an that way. Neither selection supplies an independent source of legislative authority. The official’s decisions remain subject to the Constitution, applicable law, institutional rules, elections, and other mechanisms of accountability. A ceremonial object does not repeal those obligations.
The option to affirm deserves attention as well. An affirmation permits a binding public commitment without making religious language or religious belief the measure of sincerity. A person can accept an obligation through conscience, professional ethics, civic duty, or religious conviction. Government needs a valid commitment to public responsibilities; it does not need to settle the person’s theology before accepting that commitment.
The history is less flattering than a story of effortless tolerance. State religious qualifications persisted after the federal Constitution’s adoption. In Torcaso v. Watkins (1961), the Supreme Court rejected Maryland’s requirement that a public officeholder declare belief in God, relying on the First Amendment’s religious protections. The Congressional Research Service distinguishes that ruling from the direct federal-office prohibition in Article VI (Congressional Research Service, 2022). The distinction prevents a broad principle from becoming a careless account of constitutional history.
That history gives the present argument greater seriousness. Equal access to public office has required enforcement against attempts to make religious conformity a civic credential. The protection reaches religious minorities and people without religious belief. A standard that protects a Muslim senator today protects a Christian official from a different religious majority tomorrow. Rights function as rights when their application survives a change in who holds office and who feels uncomfortable.
The Photograph Is Not the Entire Oath
A surprising amount of this controversy begins with a photograph stripped of its procedural setting. The House of Representatives administers its official oath collectively, with members assembled for that purpose. Individual photographs with the Speaker often follow the official swearing-in (U.S. House of Representatives, n.d.). A photograph of a hand resting on a particular book may record a meaningful ceremony without documenting the exact moment the member legally entered office.
The Senate has its own practice. Newly elected members present their credentials and take the oath in an open session; a later reenactment traditionally provides an opportunity for photographs in the Old Senate Chamber. The vice president ordinarily administers the oath, and the president pro tempore can do so in the vice president’s absence (U.S. Senate, n.d.-b). This procedure does not establish that any vice president must personally hold a chosen religious text.
None of this makes the ceremonial photograph fraudulent or worthless. Public ceremonies help people mark obligations, honor family members, and connect private commitments to public responsibilities. A member can value that occasion deeply without claiming that the object in the picture supplies the office’s legal foundation. The problem arises when commentators turn a photograph into a rule the institution does not have.
The distinction cuts in both political directions. Critics should not claim that a Muslim member has replaced the constitutional oath with a different religious pledge merely from seeing a Qur’an. Supporters should not describe every photographed book as an object legally required for the official oath. A compelling response to misinformation needs better standards than the misinformation it challenges.
This is why the shorthand “sworn in on” requires care. It can describe an official ceremony, an individual ceremonial oath, or a later reenactment for photographs. Everyday language often compresses those differences, and a short caption may not have space for a procedural essay. An article claiming to explain the controversy does have room, and it should use that room responsibly.
There is a practical editorial rule here: identify the office, the date, the object, and the kind of ceremony whenever the evidence permits. Do not infer a new oath from a different book. Do not infer an official policy from one photograph. Most of all, do not treat an unfamiliar religious object as evidence that a familiar constitutional obligation has vanished. That inference needs proof, and the photograph alone cannot provide it.
Presidents Used Law Books—and No Book
John Quincy Adams is a useful antidote to the claim that every departure from a Bible is a recent assault on tradition. The Library of Congress records his account of the March 4, 1825, inauguration: he pronounced the oath from a volume of laws held by Chief Justice John Marshall. The library notes supporting contemporary newspaper coverage (Library of Congress, n.d.). The precise description is a volume of laws, rather than an unsupported claim about a particular constitutional-law textbook.
That distinction may sound small, but it reflects the larger standard this debate requires. A factual example does not improve when a writer supplies details the source does not establish. Adams’s case already demonstrates that an early president’s oath did not require a Bible. There is no need to make the volume more modern, more ideologically convenient, or more symbolically explicit than the record allows.
Theodore Roosevelt supplies a different example. At his first presidential inauguration in 1901, after William McKinley’s assassination, Roosevelt used no book, according to the National Park Service (n.d.). The circumstances were exceptional, but the constitutional point survives the emergency setting. The absence of a Bible did not create an empty presidency awaiting delivery of the correct publication.
These examples should not be inflated into a claim that religion has been absent from American public ceremonies. Religious practices have been prominent, and many officials have sincerely valued them. The narrower, better-supported point is that a familiar practice does not become a universal legal condition through repetition. Tradition can explain why people expect a Bible without proving that the law requires one.
A useful comparison is the difference between an occasion’s emotional significance and its legal requirements. Families may attach enormous importance to who attends, which heirloom appears, and where a photograph is taken. Those choices can express continuity across generations. They do not necessarily determine whether the official act is valid. Confusing the two encourages people to police the ceremony’s appearance instead of examining the commitment being made.
The historical lesson is practical: ask what the rule actually says before converting a preference into a qualification. Adams and Roosevelt are evidence against a mandatory-book claim, not permission slips that later minorities must borrow from famous presidents. A Muslim official’s rights do not depend on finding an admired predecessor with a convenient anecdote. The anecdotes help correct public memory; the Constitution supplies the governing standard.
Different Faiths, the Same Public Obligation
Keith Ellison’s 2007 ceremonial oath offers an unusually well-documented example. The Library of Congress announced that the first Muslim elected to Congress would use Thomas Jefferson’s copy of an English translation of the Qur’an. The library identified the two-volume 1764 edition and its place in Jefferson’s collection (Library of Congress, 2007). The object’s institutional history makes it particularly difficult to present its appearance at the Capitol as something wholly alien to American historical collections.
Jefferson’s ownership should not be made to prove more than it proves. Owning a religious work does not establish agreement with every teaching in it, membership in the faith, or a modern position on every church-state question. It establishes ownership and an avenue of historical inquiry. Ellison’s civil eligibility did not require Jefferson’s endorsement; the association gave the ceremony a historical dimension rather than creating the underlying right.
Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar used Qur’ans in their individual ceremonial photographs with Speaker Nancy Pelosi in January 2019. FactCheck.org documented those photographs and distinguished them from the House’s earlier collective oath (FactCheck.org, 2019). The careful formulation preserves both facts: their faith was visible in the ceremonial setting, and the official House procedure remained the House procedure. No alternate legislature emerged from the photograph.
Tulsi Gabbard used the Bhagavad Gita at her congressional swearing-in in 2013, as contemporary PBS reporting recorded. In a later account, she explained that the text had personal spiritual significance to her (Gabbard, 2019; PBS, 2013). That example belongs in this discussion regardless of a reader’s assessment of her politics. A constitutional principle should not become available or unavailable when a politician changes allies or disappoints a former supporter.
Jon Ossoff’s office documented his use of Hebrew scripture once owned by Rabbi Jacob Rothschild for his January 2021 Senate swearing-in (Office of Senator Jon Ossoff, 2021). His choice carried a distinct religious and community association. Describing that volume accurately respects the tradition represented; treating all religious books as interchangeable props would miss why an official might choose one particular text.
Together, these examples illustrate a shared civic obligation expressed through different personal commitments. They do not require readers to believe that Judaism, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism teach identical doctrines. Religious liberty would be an oddly unnecessary protection if everyone already agreed. Its practical value lies in allowing people with real differences to participate in the same constitutional system without making religious agreement a prerequisite for citizenship or office.
Captain America, Superman, and Constitutional Texts
The secular examples are memorable partly for their humor. In January 2017, San Jose councilmember Lan Diep held a Captain America shield during a public swearing-in ceremony, as contemporary reporting documented (United Press International, 2017). A superhero object entered the frame, and the institution continued functioning. The anecdote is worth keeping, with the spelling corrected to Lan Diep and the action described as holding the shield.
A shield can express an aspiration without becoming a charter of municipal government. Viewers might find the choice charming, unserious, theatrical, or simply unnecessary. Those are judgments about taste and political presentation. They are different from establishing that the oath was invalid. A republic capable of surviving a Captain America accessory should be capable of discussing a religious text without immediately abandoning basic distinctions.
Kyrsten Sinema’s January 2019 Senate ceremony supplies a less theatrical example. She used a Library of Congress volume containing the United States and Arizona constitutions, according to contemporary reporting (Cooper, 2019). Calling it merely “a Library of Congress book” leaves out the detail most relevant to the argument. The selection directly reflected constitutional documents, rather than a random trip through the library catalogue.
Robert Garcia’s Superman example needs similar precision. In 2023, he selected a copy of the Constitution with a photograph of his parents, his citizenship certificate, and an original Superman No. 1 beneath it. Smithsonian reporting reproduced his explanation of that arrangement (Nowakowski, 2023). “He used a Superman comic” is memorable shorthand, but omitting the Constitution makes the story less accurate and obscures the deliberate relationship between public duty and personal history.
These cases should not be used to equate sacred scripture with comic-book fiction. That would replace one form of disrespect with another and distract from the actual argument. Their shared relevance is procedural: the meaning an object holds for an individual does not make that object a compulsory credential for everyone else. People can recognize that point without placing every book in the same theological or cultural category.
The original list’s general claim about judges deserves more restraint. Without named judges, dates, and documented ceremonies, an assertion that judges “routinely” use particular legal books is broader than the evidence assembled here. The Supreme Court does publish the constitutional and judicial oaths, providing a sound basis for discussing judicial obligations (Supreme Court of the United States, n.d.). There is no need to attach an unsupported statement about frequency when the documented presidential, congressional, and local examples already establish the argument.
Religious Freedom Cannot Depend on Political Convenience
A constitutional defense of El-Sayed’s eligibility does not require agreement with his program. Voters can challenge his proposed spending, health policy, foreign-policy judgments, or political alliances. Reporters can examine his statements and donors. Colleagues can oppose his legislation. The standard changes when criticism treats Muslim identity itself as evidence of disloyalty, rather than identifying conduct that supports a particular allegation.
The difference is easy to state and often inconvenient to apply. Asking whether an official will respect constitutional limits is legitimate. Assuming that a Qur’an proves the official will reject those limits is not evidence-based reasoning. The same principle should govern a Christian official who uses a Bible or a Jewish official who uses Hebrew scripture. Evaluate the person’s commitments and conduct; do not substitute the book cover for that work.
Nor does protection of religious expression create immunity from scrutiny. A public official who invokes religion to justify unequal treatment still owes an account of the governmental action. Citizens may investigate whether a policy violates legal protections, favors a constituency improperly, or exceeds the office’s authority. Defending an official’s freedom to choose an oath book does not settle any of those later questions. It keeps the questions attached to decisions rather than identity.
The political double standard becomes visible through a simple comparison. If a preferred politician may use a meaningful non-Christian text, an opponent must receive the same civic latitude. If a family Bible can symbolize conscience without replacing the Constitution, another scripture can serve the same personal function. A rule that changes with the official’s party is a partisan preference wearing the clothing of principle.
There is a corresponding responsibility for those criticizing anti-Muslim rhetoric. Do not claim every Republican shares a particular prejudice without evidence. Do not turn an unconfirmed ceremonial plan into established news just to strengthen a rebuttal. Distinguish documented statements by named political figures from a broad claim about millions of voters. Anger can sharpen an argument, but it cannot perform the work of verification.
My judgment is that the panic over Muslim participation reveals an impoverished idea of belonging. It asks minority citizens to make themselves less visible before their civic commitments will be accepted. That expectation places the burden on the wrong person. The citizen taking the oath must fulfill the office’s obligations; the observer who dislikes the citizen’s religion must accept that personal discomfort is not a constitutional qualification. Equal citizenship requires both forms of discipline.
Judge the Official After the Hand Comes Down
The most useful question at a swearing-in is what the official has promised to do. The most useful question afterward is whether the official does it. Public attention should follow the connection between that promise and the votes, appointments, expenditures, disclosures, and decisions that follow. A country preoccupied with the ceremony’s book can overlook misconduct committed beneath a perfectly familiar religious symbol.
A Bible does not certify honesty. A Qur’an does not establish disloyalty. A law book does not guarantee sound judgment, and a Superman comic does not produce a legislator with extraordinary moral courage. Objects can carry meaning, memory, and sincere commitment, but they cannot substitute for the continuing assessment of public conduct. Treating them as character tests makes accountability easier to stage and harder to practice.
There is a constructive way to report the next phase of the El-Sayed story. Confirm the actual ceremony when it occurs. Identify any chosen book from reliable reporting or a direct statement. Explain the institutional procedure and quote the public obligation accurately. If critics make claims about eligibility or loyalty, compare those claims with the constitutional text and their stated evidence. Do not reward an inflammatory assertion with an equally careless rebuttal.
There is an equally constructive way for readers to respond. Ask whether the objection concerns a policy, a documented action, or the mere visibility of a minority faith. Ask whether the same standard would apply to a politician the critic supports. Ask what fact would change the critic’s position. An objection that survives only by refusing those questions deserves less deference than its patriotic packaging demands.
The historical record offers useful perspective, but the principle does not need a parade of famous exceptions to become valid. Adams, Roosevelt, Ellison, Tlaib, Omar, Gabbard, Ossoff, Sinema, Diep, and Garcia illustrate different choices across different offices and ceremonies. Their examples help dismantle a false requirement. They are not a roster of people granted special exemptions from a Christian condition of office that never existed in the federal constitutional text.
El-Sayed should be evaluated as an elected official, with the full scrutiny that status warrants. If he chooses a Qur’an, that choice should be reported accurately and treated as an exercise of the same liberty available to his colleagues. The oath is to the Constitution, and the obligation continues long after the cameras leave. Anyone claiming to defend that document should begin by allowing its protections to reach people whose faith they do not share.
References
Associated Press. (2026, November 5). “JD, habibi.” Arabs celebrate El-Sayed’s use of a term of affection in his victory speech.
Congressional Research Service. (2022). Article VI—Supreme law: Interpretation of Religious Test Clause. Constitution Annotated.
Cooper, M. (2019, January 4). Krysten Sinema sworn in as senator by Mike Pence with law book instead of bible [Source headline spelling]. Los Angeles Blade.
FactCheck.org. (2019, January). Bibles aren’t required for the oath of office.
Gabbard, T. (2019). Religious bigotry is un-American and must be condemned. Medium.
Layne, N. (2026, November 4). Abdul El-Sayed becomes first Muslim elected to US Senate. Reuters.
Library of Congress. (2007, January 3). Thomas Jefferson’s copy of the Koran to be used in congressional swearing-in ceremony.
Library of Congress. (n.d.). Presidential inaugurations: 1789–1825.
National Archives. (n.d.). The Constitution of the United States: A transcription.
National Park Service. (n.d.). The George Washington inaugural Bible.
Nowakowski, T. (2023, January). Why was Congressman Robert Garcia sworn into office with rare Superman comic? Smithsonian Magazine.
Office of Senator Jon Ossoff. (2021, January). Photos & video: U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff sworn in to U.S. Senate.
PBS. (2013, January 4). Religion and the new Congress. Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
Supreme Court of the United States. (n.d.). Oaths of office: Texts, history, and traditions.
United Press International. (2017, January 26). California city councilman sworn in holding Captain America shield.
U.S. House of Representatives. (n.d.). Oath of office. History, Art & Archives.
U.S. Senate. (n.d.-a). About the Senate & the U.S. Constitution: Oath of office.
U.S. Senate. (n.d.-b). When a new Congress begins.
