Austin, Texas – Republican state Sen. Dan Patrick on Wednesday boycotted the first prayer delivered in the Texas Senate by a Muslim cleric, and then praised religious tolerance and freedom of speech in an address at the end of the day’s session.
“I think that it’s important that we are tolerant as a people of all faiths, but that doesn’t mean we have to endorse all faiths, and that was my decision,” he said later.
Patrick, a conservative radio talk-show host from Houston and self-professed Christian, said he wasn’t the only senator to miss the invocation by Imam Yusuf Kavakci of Dallas.
But he was the only senator known to have passed out to other senators copies of a 2-year- old newspaper editorial criticizing Kavakci for publicly praising two radical Islamists.
Patrick’s political ally, Houston Republican leader Jared Woodfill, had sharply criticized the fact that the Muslim prayer was scheduled during the week before Easter.
The timing was coincidental, said Sen. Florence Shapiro, a Republican from Plano, who sponsored the cleric’s appearance at the Capitol on Texas Muslims Legislative Day.
Shapiro is Jewish, and this is Passover, a major Jewish holiday.
Shapiro praised Kavakci’s “extensive interfaith experience” and said he represents a “substantial constituency of Texans who deserve to be represented.”
She said she checked out his reputation with the Anti-Defamation League and other groups to “make sure he was not somebody I would be embarrassed by.”
In a speech at the end of the Senate session, Patrick called the Muslim invocation an “extraordinary moment,” coming during Passover and before Easter.
“In many parts of the world, I know, that Jews or Christians would not be given that same right, that same freedom,” he said. “The imam that was here today, he was fortunate to be in this great country.”
