There’s no legal requirement that American officials put their hands on a religious text during swearing-in ceremonies, but it’s a custom that’s existed for generations.
Because most U.S. officials have traditionally been Christians, there’s a norm that people take their oaths with a Bible — a custom Donald Trump bypassed when he neglected to put his hand on the Bible during his second inauguration. But given the rich diversity of faiths that’s long existed in the United States, plenty of officials from minority religious traditions have used their own sacred texts.
Evidently, Republican Sen. Tommy Tuberville isn’t comfortable with this.
On New Year’s Eve, the Alabama senator responded to a report about Zohran Mamdani being sworn in with the Quran at the New York City mayor’s inauguration. “The enemy is inside the gates,” Tuberville wrote via social media.
Almost three weeks later, Tuberville did it again.
Highlighting a video clip of Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi of Virginia being sworn into office with her hand on the Quran, the Republican used social media to push the same six-word message: “The enemy is inside the gates.”
Tuberville didn’t elaborate, though the Alabamian’s missive wasn’t exactly subtle. It also generated a swift response from Democratic Sen. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, who responded to the Republican’s message with a condemnation published on Bluesky:
This is pure, unabashed bigotry. If a politician said this about any other faith, they would rightfully be run out of their party.
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But this kind of despicable anti-Muslim rhetoric is so normalized that a sitting Senator uses it without consequence.
Van Hollen concluded that Tuberville’s anti-Muslim message represented “a stain on our Congress.”
This is the same Tuberville who posted a related message to social media in mid-December that argued, “Islam is not a religion. It’s a cult. Islamists aren’t here to assimilate. They’re here to conquer. Stop worrying about offending the pearl clutchers. We’ve got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we’ll become the United Caliphate of America.”
So according to Alabama’s senior senator — a man who’s favored to get elected governor in November — the U.S. should deport Muslims because of their religion.
The Bulwark’s Joe Perticone recently wrote, “Almost a decade removed from President Donald Trump’s attempt to ban Muslims from entering the country during his first term — a vile passion project that has been given new life in his second presidency — a growing number of House and Senate Republicans are taking Islamophobia to a new level, actively calling for discrimination against Muslims and even arguing that some should be denaturalized and deported from the United States.”
Perticone’s piece was published four weeks ago. Tuberville isn’t just proving the thesis true, he’s also showing the degree to which the problem is getting worse.
Steve Benen is a producer for "The Rachel Maddow Show," the editor of MaddowBlog and an MS NOW political contributor. He's also the bestselling author of "Ministry of Truth: Democracy, Reality, and the Republicans' War on the Recent Past."
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