Now we can argue over whether or not the response to receiving the books is the correct one, but I think this situation raises a different question that is being overlooked.

Two dozen Oklahoma lawmakers plan to return copies of the Quran to a state panel on diversity after a lawmaker claimed the Muslim holy book condones the killing of innocent people.

The books were given to Oklahoma's 149 senators and representatives by the Governor's Ethnic American Advisory Council.

* * *

[Council Chairperson Marjaneh] Seirafi-Pour said the gift was a way to introduce the council to lawmakers so they could use it as a resource to "serve their offices and constituents." Oklahoma lawmakers also received a copy of the Bible earlier this year from The Baptist General Convention of Oklahoma.

Now did anyone catch the troubling detail in the excerpt? If you didn’t, go back and look again. The books were given to the legislators by an official governmental panel. Why was that? Isn’t that a violation of the constitutional separation of mosque and state? How much government money was spent procuring the books and distributing them to the legislators? Were the sacred texts of other religious groups also distributed by the Governor’s Ethnic American Advisory Council, or did they specifically act to establish Islam as the state religion of Oklahoma? Do Buddhists, Hindus, and other religious believers qualify as second-class citizens in the eyes of these multi-culti buffoons, if their books were not also distributed to enable legislators to “serve their offices and constituents”? Given the large population of Native Americans in Oklahoma (certainly outnumbering Muslims), were Cherokee and other tribal religious texts also put into the offices of legislators?

And donÂ’t try to compare that to the gift of the Bibles, because those came to the legislators from a private organization, not an arm of the government. These Qurans came with the official imprimatur of the executive branch.

Where is the freakinÂ’ ACLU on this one, folks? Or do the rules that apply to Christians not apply to Muslims?

UPDATE: I just came across this information regarding the distribution of the Qurans.

Gov. Brad Henry's Muslim advisory council is offering personalized Korans to lawmakers to mark the state's centennial, with each copy to be embossed with the Oklahoma state seal and the recipient lawmaker's name. The all-Muslim group — plain-vanilla-named the American Ethnic Advisory Council — asked lawmakers to notify it if they didn't want a Koran, which the group described as "the record of the exact words revealed by G-d through the Angel Gabriel to the Prophet Muhammad." So far, 24 have declined.

Of course, it's the rejection of the Korans that's making headlines, not their state-sealed if privately funded distribution. No one asks what the Koran has to do with Oklahoma's centennial, for Pete's sake; or why a government organization is proselytizing about "the exact words" of Allah; or how those words in that book sound to non-Muslims leery of Islam's age-old message to convert, submit or die. In our weird world, it's not the Islamic message that's branded hateful or even insensitive; it's the person who rejects it. This is the technique that usually shuts people up.

If this is correct, the books themselves are privately funded – but still being distributed by a government panel. This still seems to be creating a “mosque and state” problem to me.

Second, why is an “Ethnic American” group composed solely of Muslims? Even if, as Diana West notes later in the column, it was intended to be a group to be composed of members of the "Middle East/Near East community", why are there no Arab Christians or Middle Eastern Jews? Why doesn’t its name clarify what “ethnic Americans” it is intended to “advise” about if it is intended to be an exclusively Muslim group? Could it be intended to disguise the “mosque and state” violation in question?

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