"To Whom It May Concern..."

Having recently moved to the semi-former Republic of Texas, I can report that as ubiquitous as, say, Starbucks is in your average East Coast city, churches are in Dallas. And Dallas, I am occasionally reminded by Texans from other parts of the Lone Star State, is only tenuously a part of Texas anyway. Not as bad as Austin, mind you, but still, as the folks in Fort Worth like to say “where the East peters out.” Even so, should your car ever break down here, I can’t speak for the nearest garage, but I can guarantee you there will be a church within walking distance where you can go and pray for its recovery.

Texas no doubt has many members of other faiths, as well ("Bless their hearts!"), but there’s little doubt that this is the Bible Belt, with a heavy emphasis on the New Testament, by Gawd. Thus the prospect of a Muslim Imam, specifically one Yusuf Kavakci of the Dallas Central Mosque, offering the invocation in the Texas Senate with what some bloggers are calling an anti-Jewish and anti-Christian prayer was bound to cause, as they say in these parts, some ruckus. Well, as Bryan at Hot Air reports, the senate is in Austin, and Austin is, after all, “Berkeley in all but name.”

Kavakci is variously alleged to be both a moderate voice and as being sympathetic to some Islamic fundamentalists, and I have frankly neither the time nor the interest in tracing or sorting out these allegations. The key here, to me anyway, is the text of the invocation, itself, which has been translated as follows:

In the name of god, Allah, the beneficent, the merciful. All praise is for Allah, our lord, the lord of the worlds, the compassionate, the merciful, master of the day of judgments. Oh, god, Allah, you alone we worship, and you alone we call on for help. Oh, Allah, guide us to the straight path, the path of those whom you have favored, not of those who have earned your wrath or of those who have lost the way. Our lord, have mercy on us from yourself and guide us in our efforts, strivings, and works.

These same sites report that the penultimate sentence of that prayer is well understood in Islam as referring first to Jews and second to Christians, Islam being the "straight path." “How dare this man offer a non-inclusionary prayer in a public building,” seems to be the gist of the complaint; or, perhaps more accurately, how dare he voice a non-inclusionary, non-Christian prayer!

I’m perfectly willing to accept the ‘anti’-Jewish and ‘anti’-Christian interpretation at face value at least on grounds that any Muslim who doesn’t think Islam is the truth and other religions are therefore in error and risk God’s (or Allah’s) anger wouldn’t be much of a Muslim. And, of course, the same would be true of Jews and Christians, as well. So it basically comes down to that whole Church / State thingie and something Mom used to say about geese and ganders.

Any invocation more theologically specific than (and probably even including) “To whom it may concern, if there’s anybody listening, please help.” will be offensive to someone. This leaves two alternatives. First, permit no prayers of any sort for any public, official events of any sort. Otherwise, permit any and all such prayers, offensive or not, and let God, who probably has better things to do than listen to politicians in the first place, sort it all out.