Purchase1260

For your very first post here maybe you should have introduced yourself, and given us an idea of your education. I'll go out on a limb and guess "multi-culturalism" is/was a big part of your college experience.

And let me ask you one question; were you 8, 9 or 10 on 9/11/2001?

Welcome to the boards.

Of course, where are my manners?

I'm 21, a senior philosophy major, with a background in Cinema studies. As far as my education in multi-culturism goes, I've always been disinterested in the study of culture. I don't mind it being celebrated, and i can respect it to the point of reason, but truth be told, I'm really not one for tradition.

As for my memory of the attacks on 9/11, much of it is very vivid. From the whispers among teachers, the looks of panic as we asked what was going on. They lied. Something about downed power lines, I believe it was. Walking home was surreal, I remember helicopters overhead. At the age of 11, i couldn't fully comprehend what was going on. I knew that it was an attack, that the twin towers had been knocked down, and that people died. I remember wishing that when i visited the towers several years before, I had gotten a pressed penny with a picture of them on it, instead of the Lady Liberty imprint.

I remember the patriotism. The US vs THEM. To a child,it was good guys and bad guys, black and white. I remember poorly constructed flash games in which the player had to navigate a maze with a missile to bomb Osama bin Laden. I may have been a bit young to truly say this, but i grew up in both a pre and post 9/11 United States.

Nobody in my family has ever been a firefighter. I'm the first. The culture and mannerisms are still slightly alien to me, and i expect they will be for quite some time (I tend to get defensive when anybody starts "busting my balls".) The topic of 9/11 in the fire service, even a decade later still resembles a healing wound. It wasn't until quite a few years ago that i started to actually appreciate the magnitude of what had actually happened.

I digress. My take on the whole issue is that it's being treated as a cultural conflict. There is a dress code to ride, and odds are it's for safety. Life before culture. It's that simple to me. Of course, because the conflict was not between two people of the same heritage, it's cause for controversy.

It's not an attack on our culture.

We're not imposing on their freedom of religion.

Of course, this is just my perspective.

And thanks for the warm welcome.

This is a ridiculous blanket statement, and this along with comparing the Muslim brotherhood to the vast majority of Muslims shows that you have only a vague and/or slanted understanding of Islam.

Look, I agree that the rules are the rules and that no one, regardless of their religious practices, should be exempt from rules that are designed simply to keep them safe. Its obvious that head coverings of the kind at issue here would be dangerous on a number of rides in the park as they could become caught in tracks, etc. And I agree that the event organizers, having been informed of these rules, didn't do a very good job of communicating this to event goers ahead of time. You'll get no argument from me that this is largely to blame for this incident occurring in the first place. But I also know from accounts of people who were there (and no one has mentioned this possibility so far) that the park rangers involved in the initial altercation didn't do a very good job of diffusing the situation. It's mentioned in one of the articles cited here that they pushed some of the women who confronted them which, unless they truly felt threatened (and come on, seriously?), just seems like a really bad idea. Putting your hands on a woman in a confrontational way in front of her husband or any male relative would surely escalate any situation regardless of the religious persuasions of those involved. Oh and by the way, those rangers are totally fine.

Long and short? I'm saying that there's blame to be placed pretty equally on both sides of this situation. And chalking this up as some kind of anti-American Islamic riot or an attempt to impose Sharia law in the US is just completely absurd. It was the unfortunate result of poor planning and poor communication, nothing more. This could have happened with a Jewish group, a Sikh group, or anyone else who's religious beliefs happened to conflict in any way with park rules. Making this out to be the fault of Muslim "animals" trying to take over our country as many of you have just makes you sound like close-minded buffoons. Sorry, but it's the truth. Should we blindly adopt some of their more out-dated (and little-followed) views as our own without questioning them? Absolutely not. But should we, by the same token, write off all their beliefs as "savage" and demand that they give them up without first questioning that logic? Absolutely not. A little cultural sensitivity isn't the same as being stupidly "PC" and a little worldly education goes a long way in averting this kind of incident.

Bring on the hate, I know it's coming.

For my very first post on this forum, I'm going to thank you. I had clicked through a few pages and was was honestly a bit disturbed by some of the responses. Level headed logic is like a breath of fresh here.