"An oath on the Quran is not a lawful oath under our law."

North Carolina, the state that still enforces laws against unwed cohabitation, is now wrestling with a dispute over whether Muslims can swear on the Quran instead of the Bible when they testify in court:

The state's judges will be asked this week to decide whether witnesses in North Carolina courtrooms can be sworn in on a Quran rather than a Bible.

The move comes after Guilford County judges rejected an offer last week by the Greensboro Islamic center to donate copies of the Quran, the Muslim holy book.

...In a preliminary opinion issued last week, a lawyer for the Administrative Office of the Courts said that state law allows people to be sworn in using a Quran rather than a Bible, Ellis said. But Guilford County judges told officials with the Islamic center Friday that they would not allow that in their courtrooms.

"An oath on the Quran is not a lawful oath under our law," W. Douglas Albright, Guilford's Senior Resident Superior Court judge, said earlier in the week.

There may be a slippery slope afoot with issue. If they decide to allow Muslims to swear on the Quran, might they allow me to swear on Thomas Paine's Age of Reason? Or perhaps many members of a growing new cult would like to swear on a Star Trek DVD. And why not?