A few weeks ago, six imams were removed from an USAIR flight originating from Minneapolis where they had just been attending a conference of Imams held at the Mall of America on building bridges. Their suspicious behavior? Praying out loud while they waited and asking for seatbelt extensions. (Here’s an argument that their behavior was truly suspicious and here’s an argument saying it wasn’t). Coulter: Profiling Muslims is … like profiling the Klan

Before they knew it, airport police swarmed onto the plane, and the six imams were herded out, handcuffed and interrogated for hours… After the FBI cleared them, US Airways still refused to allow them to fly. The imams bought tickets on Northwest Airlines and flew back to Phoenix… [Link]

The event has produced widely differing reactions. Ann Coulter piped up to argue that it is good to profile Muslims and Arabs (she makes little distinction), saying:

After the attacks of 9/11, profiling Muslims is more like profiling the Klan. [Link]

Washington DC area talk show host Jerry Klein went the other direction, staging an event to demonstrate how deep bigotry towards Muslims was. First he suggested that “all Muslims in the United States should be identified with a crescent-shape tattoo or a distinctive arm band,” a suggestion that was supported by manycallers. One went further, saying:

… that tattoos, armbands and other identifying markers such as crescent marks on driver’s licenses, passports and birth certificates did not go far enough. “What good is identifying them?” he asked. “You have to set up encampments like during World War Two with the Japanese and Germans…” [Link]

At the end of the hour long show, where many people had called in to argue that visual identification of Muslims would make other Americans safer, the host turned the tables on his callers:

Klein revealed that he had staged a hoax. … “I can’t believe any of you are sick enough to have agreed for one second with anything I said,” he told his audience … “For me to suggest to tattoo marks on people’s bodies, have them wear armbands, put a crescent moon on their driver’s license on their passport or birth certificate is disgusting. It’s beyond disgusting.

“Because basically what you just did was show me how the German people allowed what happened to the Jews to happen … We need to separate them, we need to tattoo their arms, we need to make them wear the yellow Star of David, we need to put them in concentration camps, we basically just need to kill them all because they are dangerous…” [Link]

This same debate about difference and disloyalty has now mutated and cropped up in the debate about the swearing in of the first Muslim congressman, Keith Ellison, coincidentally of Minnesota:

When America’s first Muslim congressman, a Democrat from Minnesota, let it be known he will carry a Koran to his swearing-in ceremony on Jan. 4, conservative pundit Dennis Prager called it “an act of hubris … that undermines American civilization.”

In a web column, the talk-show host said, “Insofar as a member of Congress taking an oath to serve America and uphold its values is concerned, America is interested in only one book, the Bible. If you are incapable of taking an oath on that book, don’t serve in Congress…” [Link]

What makes this position so interesting is that it is both irrelevant and unconstitutional. It is irrelevant because congressmen do not take an oath on any book at all:

In Congress, newly elected representatives do not put their left hands on any book. They raise their right hands, and are sworn in together as the speaker of the House administers the oath of office. Some do carry a book, according to House historians, and some choose to photograph a private swearing-in afterward with their hand on the Bible. One senator is known to have carried an expanded Bible that included the Book of Mormon. [Link]

So for the purpose of being sworn in you could carry a dictionary with you, it doesn’t matter. The book is just for the photo op. It’s unconstitutional because:

The Constitution says: “The senators and representatives … shall be bound by oath or affirmation to support this Constitution; but no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States…” [Link]

Prager may or may not know that, but that’s besides the point. The debate here and above seems to be largely about symbolic loyalty, what it takes to be considered American.

The irony is that in 2000, there was a great pan-conservative movement, created in part by activists like Grover Norquist, where conservative Christians, Jews and Muslims had all found common cause in the Bush Presidency. Six years ago, cultural conservatives would have had less of a problem with Ellison’s actions, as long as he carried a holy book at all. Now, however, lines have been redrawn and the same conservative Muslims who were once seen as allies in the fight against secular humanism and sex education, are now seen as outsiders. To me it just shows how insincere their inclusion was in the first place.