{"id":2637,"date":"2011-08-31T09:00:54","date_gmt":"2011-08-31T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=2637"},"modified":"2011-08-31T09:22:09","modified_gmt":"2011-08-31T15:22:09","slug":"muslims-headgear-amusement-parks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/?p=2637","title":{"rendered":"Muslims, Headgear & Amusement Parks"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>One of the wonderful freedoms that we enjoy in America is the freedom of religion.\u00a0 Enshrined as the first right in the First Amendment, Americans are free to practice (or not practice) the religion of their choice without fear of undue or unreasonable government interference.\u00a0 While the First Amendment is directed primarily at what government can and cannot do regarding a person’s religious expression, there are safeguards in place to accommodate religious beliefs in the workplace and in other venues as well.<\/p>\n

Our religious beliefs and practices\u00a0should not trump common-sense regulations designed to protect all citizens.\u00a0 For example, no one, regarless of their faith, should be able to have a driver’s license picture taken with their face fully or partially covered so as to obscure the identity of the license holder.\u00a0 I think most Americans would find this patently absurd.\u00a0 Likewise, safety precautions\u00a0relating to dress and\/or headgear warn on certain rides at amusement parks should apply to all patrons equally.\u00a0\u00a0No one group should expect to receive an exemption from a reasonable rule designed to protect all riders\u00a0on a given thrill ride.<\/p>\n

Apparently, a group of Muslims at the Rye Playland Amusement Park in\u00a0Westchester County, NY\u00a0to celebrate Eid-ul-Fitr, an Islamic holiday that marks the end of Ramadan<\/a>, thought they should be allowed to wear Muslim\u00a0headgear (hijabs) on\u00a0all the rides, regardless of the safety rules that were in place not only for their protection, but for the protection of all riders.\u00a0 When this group of Muslims did not get their way, a fight broke out which injured two Playland\u00a0park rangers\u00a0who were taken to\u00a0a local hospital<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Was this just another case similar to the incident\u00a0at Dollywood when an overly aggressive Neidermeyer-type ticket-taker refused to allow two lesbians <\/a>into the park because of some supposed violation of a t-shirt rule which never existed and was not posted on their website?\u00a0 From the evidence, that does not appear to be the case.\u00a0 The leader of the group was apparently told that headgear could not be worn on certain rides<\/a>.<\/p>\n

However, what separates this case from the Dollywood one is the posting of clear guidelines on Rye Playland’s website\u00a0<\/a>for which rides allow headgear to be worn.\u00a0 Now,\u00a0unless\u00a0someone from Rye Playland snuck around in\u00a0the last 24 hours\u00a0and added saftey notations to their website\u00a0— including which\u00a0thrill rides\u00a0allow headgear — then\u00a0it is clear that these rules were not imposed upon this Muslim group out of left field.\u00a0 That the group leader did\u00a0not convey the clear rules to his or\u00a0her group appears to be one of the major factors leading to the altercation that took place.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately, behind what animates the reaction that took place is a sense of entitlement that some Muslims seem to possess.\u00a0 I\u00a0say “some” because I believe that most Muslim-Americans desire to live by the rule of law which applies to all citizens without regard to\u00a0a particular religion.\u00a0\u00a0However, some Musim-Americans believe that the rules do not apply to them, even if those rules are reasonable and are applied in a fair manner to everyone, regardless of their faith or religion.\u00a0\u00a0This thinking is illustrated by the\u00a0comments of\u00a0one member of the group at Rye Playland:<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody got mad, everybody got upset,\u201d Amr Khater, a Brooklyn resident, told\u00a0 The Journal News. \u201cIt\u2019s our holiday. Why would you do this to us?\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

It may\u00a0have been Mr.\u00a0Khater’s holiday, but it wasn’t his park.\u00a0 It may have been Mr. Khater’s holiday, but it doesn’t exempt him from the rules which apply to us all.\u00a0 It may be Mr.\u00a0Khater’s religion, but his religion (or any religion for that matter) does not give him (or anyone else) the right to disregard the rules that are put in place for everyone.\u00a0 No one — not Muslim, not Christian, not Jew — gets a free pass to do whatever we want.\u00a0 We have the wonderful right to practice our religion freely within this country (a right that Christians and Jews do not have in much of the Middle East).\u00a0 Let’s not abuse that right by demanding non-sensical exemptions to the\u00a0established guidelines for living in the greatest country in the world.\u00a0 And, that’s not just limited to Amusement Parks!<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

(Image Credit<\/a>)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One of the wonderful freedoms that we enjoy in America is the freedom of religion.\u00a0 Enshrined as the first right in the First Amendment, Americans are free to practice (or not practice) the religion of their choice without fear of undue or unreasonable government interference.\u00a0 While the First Amendment is directed primarily at what government…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[29,30,35],"tags":[1361,3370,1096,1359,383,3379,3388,1360,573,654,685,1362,1154,1358,1264,1356,1357],"class_list":["post-2637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-islam","category-law","category-religion","tag-amusement-parks","tag-christianity","tag-dollywood","tag-eid-ul-fitr","tag-first-amendment","tag-freedom-of-religion","tag-islam","tag-islamic-holidays","tag-judaism","tag-middle-east","tag-muslim","tag-muslim-americans","tag-neidermeyer","tag-ramadan","tag-rule-of-law","tag-rye-playland","tag-westchester-county"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p1LP7G-Gx","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2637"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2645,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2637\/revisions\/2645"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/fromlaw2grace.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}