You have to give Congressman Ellison's PR people a lot of credit. Talk about turning a ludicrous and xenophobic controversy into a history lesson on the roots of tolerance in the American Republic:
Rep. elect Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to Congress, found himself under attack last month when he announced he'd take his oath of office on the Koran - especially from Virginia Rep. Virgil Goode, who called it a threat to American values.Yet the holy book at tomorrow's ceremony has an unassailably all-American provenance. We've learned that the new congressman - in a savvy bit of political symbolism - will hold the personal copy once owned by Thomas Jefferson.
"He wanted to use a Koran that was special," said Mark Dimunation, chief of the rare book and special collections division at the Library of Congress, who was contacted by the Minnesota Dem early in December. Dimunation, who grew up in Ellison's 5th District, was happy to help.
Take that, Dennis Prager and Rep. Goode (R-VA). It's the dictionary definition of a PR coup.
You can read the whole article here.
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