President Obama Sworn into Office on Quran-Fiction!
Summary of eRumor:
A photo supposedly shows President Obama taking the oath of office on the Quran.
The Truth:
Rumors that President Obama was sworn into office on the Quran have been circulating since at least 2007, but none of them are true.
The most recent version of the email shows a photo of President Obama being sworn into office for the second time in January 2013 on two books. A viral email claims that the president had placed the Quran on top of the Bible in a symbolic gesture about where his priorities lay.
However, there’s no truth to those reports. In reality, President Obama was officially sworn into office in a private ceremony held in the Blue Room of the White House. In that ceremony, the president was reportedly sworn in on Michelle Obama’s family bible.
In the public ceremony, which was held on the following day, January 20, 2013, Obama was sworn into office on two bibles. The larger one on the bottom was owned by Abraham Lincoln, and the smaller Bible on top is a “traveling Bible” that was once owned by Martin Luther King, Jr., USA Today reports:
President Obama will take the oath of office with two Bibles that once belonged to a pair of civil rights icons: Abraham Lincoln and Martin Luther King Jr.
King’s “traveling Bible” was provided by his family, while the Lincoln Bible is from the Library of Congress and was used during the 16th president’s inauguration on March 4, 1861; Obama also used the Lincoln Bible during his first inauguration in 2009.
In 2005, a similar rumor that Obama had been sworn into the Senate in 2005 on the Quran also went viral. However, Obama’s campaign confirmed that he was sworn into office on his own personal Bible. He was sworn in by Vice President Dick Cheney.
Truth or Fiction previously investigated a similar rumor that President Obama was sworn in for his second term in office by an Imam. We also found that rumor to be false. Click here to read the full investigation.