As anyone who knows and loves horses can tell you, our modern horse owes its beginnings to a group of 24 ponies brought to the New World by Christopher Columbus on his second voyage in the late 15th century. These ancestors were a cross be-tween standard Spanish stock and the fabled Ara-bian horses brought into Spain by those who fol-lowed the prophet Mohammed in the 8th century.
While this is common knowledge to many, recent negative reaction to the blessing of the Fort Worth Stock Show by a Muslim cleric shows how quickly we can forget the facts when in the grip of fear mongering. We have the culture of Islam to thank in no small measure for the quality of the horses that entertain us in the rodeo. With tongue in cheek, I would suggest that if there had not been early Muslim horsemen, we might not have a ro-deo.
We need also to remember that cowboys of the West were joined in the mid-nineteenth century by Bedouin camel handlers when the U. S. Army imported 74 camels to be the foundation of its Camel Corp. Bud Kennedy has already reminded us of this in a recent column on this unpleasant and rude behavior at the rodeo. What Bud didn’t men-tion is that one of those camel-boys went by the Arabic name Hadji Ali. After the outfit was dis-banded, he made his home in Arizona under the nickname he got from soldiers, Hi Jolly. The pallet of “cowboys of color” just got richer.
The awareness of the reach and depth of penetration of the achievements of Islam into Ameri-can culture could have been a factor among others which has motivated the leadership of the FWSS to ask Imam Bakhach to offer a blessing at one of the shows at this year’s rodeo. But there is much more to this gesture which is perfectly in line with the spirit and aims of the Fort Worth Stock Show. We are al-ways impressed by the stunning variety of animals and the encouraging of everyone to offer their best in competition. Surely this passion is not the private privilege of any one religion. The quality and variety of what is done in the arena ought to be reflected in the quality and variety of many honored religious traditions called to bless this event.
By way of a personal word…I have known Imam Bakhach for 20 years, beginning when he and I with Rabbi Mecklenberger led our respective congre-gations in many years of “Abrahamic Dialogues.” He is a dear friend and a respected colleague. He is also a veteran of the Fort Worth Human Relations Commission, and the State Department has sent him on missions to disabuse Muslims around the world of the mistaken notion that American Muslims are per-secuted here. He and all peace-loving Muslims need to be honored and supported.