First Muslim congressman speaks on faith

Representative Keith Ellison, a Minnesota Democrat who is the first Muslim elected to Congress, was to be the major speaker at the Religion Newswriters Association convention yesterday, but he got a better offer: President Obama decided to fly into Minneapolis to pitch health care reform at a rally at the Target Center, and he invited Ellison to join him on Air Force One. But, using a technique that seems to be increasingly common among politicians who cancel scheduled appearances, Ellison sent along a video in which he addressed a few questions left for him on his voice mail. The congressman offered a general disclaimer – “I would not presume to speak for the Muslim community – I am not an imam, nor a religious scholar’’ and he noted that most of the folks who voted to elect him were Christian. But he offered a few thoughts about the role of religion in public life. “Religion as a force in people’s lives is greater now than in quite a while,’’ he said. He gave a full-throated endorsement of religious people playing “every single role” in public life. He noted that religion has negative as well as positive impacts, and, he said, “the potential to be explosive,’’ but also said of atheists, “even their philosophy has resulted in catastrophic harm,’’ citing Pol Pot and Stalin as examples. “Clearly no segment of humanity has failed to use a philosophy or religion to change society for the good or the bad."

Ellison said that faith gives policy makers “a certain sense of humility. If you believe in an omniscient, divine power, and I certainly do…we have to recognize that we’re both important and infinitely small, and should not therefore presume to have all the answers.’’

Ellison, who supports a single-payer health care system, was most explicit about the role of his faith when discussing the issue of health care reform, and, in the line of the day, he wryly posed the rhetorical question, “Jesus healed the sick – did he not?” before adding, “and he didn’t charge them for it either.” Ellison ticked off a list of ways in which Muslims help provide health care, both through free clinics at various places around the country, and through the work that many Muslims do in the health care profession.

“A caring nation cares for the health of its people,’’ he said. “It is a moral axiom that we should lend assistance to people caring for health maladies.” He argued that the reason the United States does not have universal health insurance, unlike other multiple other countries, “is that a small group of people make a bundle of money on the status quo.’’

Asked about American relations with the Muslim world, particularly in the wake of President Obama’s Cairo speech, Ellison praised the president’s efforts to date, but said, “what’s needed is not only the excellent speeches the president gave, but we need to dig in and look at our policy decisions.’’ He called the Iraq War “a mistaken policy” and said it has been damaging to U.S. relations with the Muslim world. He also criticized the “corrosive effect on civil liberties” of the war on terror. He urged the audience of reporters to rethink what they mean by the phrase “the Muslim world,’’ suggesting that perhaps that phrase is used to describe countries where other factors, such as colonial history, are more important than religion. But Ellison also went further than I often hear in statements from Muslim leaders, volunteering, “I say to leaders in the Middle East, 'You need to talk about issues of incitement. Why do we have educational materials that say derogatory things about other religions? This is a bad thing, and not properly in line with Islamic teaching'.’’

(Photo, by Jonathan Ernst/Reuters, shows President Obama arriving in Minneapolis on Sept. 12, 2009 with, from left, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, Senators Amy Klobuchar and Al Franken and Representative Keith Ellison.)