The same from a different group. The point is that neither a Muslim prayer or a Christian prayer or any other religious prayer is offensive.
Your are commended for your acceptance of the beliefs of others. Many people are unfortunately not as tolerant as you are, especially in the South. If most of the prayers at public school functions in South Carolina were non-Christian prayers I suspect the local public would be up in arms, and often. I think you know that to be true as well.
The truth is it is not up to you nor to me to decide what religious prayers are or are not offensive for people of various religions. We don't really know. I have a few friends who are Sikhs and I know a little about their faith, but can I tell you what they might find offensive in an impromptu Christian public school commencement address? I cannot.
I will tell you that at one of my children's public school graduation the commencement speaker, who many of us discovered after the fact, was a local evangelical minister. He began congratulating all the students and their parents and in the middle of his address he began talking about drinking and partying and sin and
how it would offend God for those graduating to drink and party be tempted "of the flesh". At that point, I was uncomfortable as I could be. There wasn't much anyone could do about it at that point. But the preacher wasn't finished. He began talking about alcoholism being a sin and how it began with one drink and how alcoholics would be damned to eternal hell. He said, it would anger God for students to use the occasion to begin a life of alcoholism. With a few more very specific references to God and sin and the students he finished with a prayer to save everyone from temptation.
Josie, I am here to tell you no one moved. The place was silent. Everyone was stunned. I was pissed beyond words. My wife had her fingers digging into my arm to keep me seated. Once the entire affair was finished a mob of angry parents rushed the preacher, the principal and anyone else connected with the school. People were shocked and very angry, even my very Southern Baptist mother-in-law.
We felt used, we felt abused, we were offended. So many parents were offended that a letter of apology went out from the principal to the parents of the students who graduated.
I'm not exaggerating, I'm shooting your straight. It is fact. I was there with my children and extended family.
It's an intelligent, hard-working senior in high school having his/her moment to talk about his/her life, beliefs, influences,...whatever. Don't like it, don't believe it, don't live it? -- so what?
And if the hard-working senior talked about how being a Wiccan had changed his life and allowed him to realize his full potential and finishing that he asked everyone to join him in a Wiccan prayer you'd be all for that and most supportive?