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AMP Report – April 6, 2007
Imam Kavakci leads first prayer by a
Muslim cleric on Texas senate floor
Imam Yusuf Kavakci of the Dallas Central Mosque became the first Muslim cleric to offer the Texas Senate's daily prayer on April 5, 2007. Republican Senator Dan Patrick became so irate that he walked out.
Patrick, a conservative radio talk show host from Houston and self-professed Christian, said he wasn't the only senator to miss the invocation - in English and song - Imam Yusuf Kavakci.
But he was the only senator known to have passed out to other senators copies of a two-year-old newspaper editorial criticizing Kavakci for publicly praising two radical Islamists.
Patrick's political ally, Harris County Republican Chairman Jared Woodfill, had sharply criticized the fact that the Muslim prayer was scheduled during the week before Easter.
Imam Yusuf Kavakci, the resident Islamic scholar for the Dallas Central Mosque in Richardson, was invited to deliver the morning invocation by Sen. Florence Shapiro, R-Plano, after a constituent recommended that he speak. Shapiro, one of two Jewish state senators, said she was impressed by Kavakci's membership on the Richland Community College's Peace Institute advisory board and the religious advisory boards for the Dallas and Richardson school districts.
The Senate and House begin each floor session with a prayer, and those selected to deliver it are customarily given wide latitude to say what they wish. Some have invoked Jesus or Lord or God.
Imam Yusuf Kavacki, a native of Turkey, offered blessings from the Koran in which he recited a passage from the Koran in Arabic and read an English translation that said in part: "All praise is for Allah. You alone we worship and you alone we call on for help." He ended with a musical chant.
"I surely believe that everyone should have the right to speak, but I didn't want my attendance on the floor to appear that I was endorsing that," said Patrick, a freshman Republican from Houston.
Patrick later gave a short speech on the Senate floor in which he called Kavakci's prayer an "extraordinary moment" that underscores that America is a nation "so tolerant of others we bend over backwards to allow others to pray as they wish."
He pointed out that other countries would not do the same for Christians and Jews, who are observing Easter and Passover this week.
Kavakci said he can't understand why anyone would have a problem with his prayer or with the text he chose, which he said spoke generically about the mercy of God. He said he does not know Patrick or understand why he would criticize him.
"For my perspective as a Muslim, we are all brothers and sisters and children of Adam and Eve as we say," Kavakci said. "For us there is no problem really."
Daily Texan reported that basically, the senator left the floor because he is proud to be a Christian. He reasoned that since Christian prayers would not be heard in other countries, he should not have to listen to a Muslim prayer in the United States.
Never mind that two wrongs don't make a right. Never mind that doing as he did makes us exactly like those nations he vilifies. Never mind that the Senate opens with a Christian prayer just about every single day, during which senators of other religions have sat patiently and respectfully.
The United States was founded on right to differ. How can prayer be lead when we are not all the same, do not pray to the same god and do not pray for the same things? Protestant majorities currently arguing for prayer in schools would be furious if a Catholic prayer was imposed. Things look different from a minority standpoint.
Daily Texan said that Sen. Patrick has no right to infer that a Christian American is more American than a Jewish- American, a Muslim-American, a Buddhist-American or even an atheist American. That is like assuming blonde Americans are more American than redheaded Americans, simply because more of them exist. [Source: Daily Texan/Associated Press/Fort Worth Star-Telegram/Houston Chronicle]
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