A Lie is A Lie - "So help me Hannah"!

As Muslim-Christian relations are under the spotlight around the world, US judges sometimes face a vexing question: Can witnesses raise their right hand and swear to tell the truth ... on the Koran? So what happens to the practice of prompting the witness to recite an oath to tell the truth "so help me God."  Many courts have dropped the once common practice of having a witness place his left hand upon a Bible while raising his right hand and swearing an oath to tell the truth. 

In most cases, U.S. courts have long since allowed witnesses who object to swearing an oath to God to simply affirm that they promise to tell the truth. Already, witnesses in American courts do not have to take a religious oath and can instead simply testify on pain of perjury. It's up to judges to decide what passes for an oath. 

Most 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: Mochitura 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.

As to the question of whether courts still ask trial witnesses to swear they will tell the truth with an oath ending in the words "So help me God," there is no definitive answer — the U.S. legal system encompasses courts of various levels (from municipal city and county courts to state and federal courts), all of which may have differing procedural practices for the swearing-in of witnesses.

My advice?--Don't get your shorts into a knot!

"So help me God," some people are just going to perjure themselves no matter of the oath, it is up to the legal system to sort out the truth in the end. After all, if it goes to jury, the facts are decided by twelve different people before a final judgement is made--and that is sometimes imperfect too--"No Lie!"