ACLU of N.C. & Syidah Matteen V. State of North Carolina - Views On The Case

Views On The Case

Some have seen this matter "as the latest case of religious liberty to arise in North Carolina. In other cases, employers have been challenged to allow Sikhs to keep their beards and Muslim women to wear veils." University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill's Professor of Religion, Thomas Tweed said "This North Carolina case is another example of the ways America's expanding religious diversity is coming into conflict with established practices in the public arena."

New York University law professor Noah Feldman said "This case is a cousin to the Ten Commandments case in Alabama, where a judge does something that's pretty obviously unconstitutional, with a goal of sending a message ... that he's for fundamental religious values."

The Christian Science Monitor noted that in contrast to Judge Albright most American judges in recent history “have apparently given other oaths wide latitude. In a federal terrorism case in 1997 in Washington D.C., for instance, the judge allowed Muslim witnesses to swear to Allah. And the practice isn't new: Mochitsura Hashimoto, the Japanese submarine commander who testified in the court martial of a US Navy captain in 1945, was allowed by a military tribunal to swear on his beliefs of Shinto, the ancient religion of Japan.”

The Christian Science Monitor also quoted Manish Vij, a New York blogger for Sepia Mutiny who said, “The only thing more compelling ... South Asian Muslims is to literally swear upon your mother's head, and mothers aren't as convenient to drag around in court as a copy of the Koran.”