XM MLB Chat: Six Flags Great Adventure has Muslim only day Sept. 10, 2010, Jackson, NJ

9/10/10, "Six Flags of Islam," MoreMonmouthMusings,net, by Grace Cangemi

"Today is “Great Muslim Adventure Day” at Six Flags in Jackson (New Jersey). As Americans prepare to lower our flags to half staff in preparation for the remembrance of the victims murdered on September 11, 2001, all six flags at Great Adventure are welcoming only Muslims and those willing to “fellowship” with them into the park.

According to the gentleman manning the ICNA (Islamic Circle of North America) stand near the ticket booth, it is the end of Ramadan and “a day of celebration.”

To Patti Ryan-Miller, who, along with her 12 year old daughter and her 9 year old friend, was turned away for Muslim Day, it was “a slap in the teeth.”

“It’s really insensitive and terrible timing,” she said. “To make it worse, my daughter earned these passes doing community service for her religious education.”

Brian from Toms River, who I met with his 2 young daughters on their way out of the park told me that he didn’t have any opinion on Islam but that being turned away for not being Muslim “doesn’t help with September 11^th being tomorrow.”

Six Flags just tipped the insensitivity scale. I’m sure that many parks have “fellowship days” for people of different faiths, but to close your facility to the public for a celebration of Islam on the eve of the largest mass murder in our nation’s history – an act committed by radical Muslims – is so unbelievable that I had to see for myself.

If a day out at Six Flags was supposed to be a “fellowship day,” holding it on September 10^th didn’t make me feel any fellowship. Just the opposite. Where is the sensitivity to your fellow human beings, those of us, living so close to the site of so many of these deaths, who experienced such devastating loss at the hands of your brethren? Where is the condemnation for radicals who murder your fellow Americans? Where is the spirit of inclusion that would have you show non-Muslims that you really are a “religion of peace?”

As September 11^th approaches, I have been increasingly angered that the lessons of that day are being passed over as more and more politicians and pundits have decided to use the occasion and the controversy surrounding it to tell Americans that we are “insensitive” and “discriminatory” toward Muslims and not to mourn the loss of the three thousand souls who perished on that beautiful Tuesday.

I’m not sensitive to Muslims who won’t let little kids who win awards for community service ride a roller coaster with them. I’m not sensitive to people who don’t recognize how important a day September 11^th will always be to the Americans who lived through it. And I’m sure as hell not sensitive to anyone who won’t loudly and vocally condemn any piece of human detritus who would slaughter my friends and family in the name of their religious jihad.

When Danny Gallagher was in high school, our church youth group had a day at Great Adventure. The park was open to the public, although people from churches throughout the state had come to join together and spend the day. I’m sure there were some Muslims there. We wouldn’t have known because it didn’t matter as long as everyone was having fun at the park. Perhaps that’s why “Great Muslim Day” outraged me. This smart, bright young man would have been barred from Six Flags today. And he probably would have been good natured about it. That’s how Danny was. I’ll never know because he never came home after that Tuesday morning nine years ago.

If my sensitivity is all used up today, maybe it’s because it’s being spent on Danny’s family and all of those who lost loved ones at the hands of Islamic Jihadists. Maybe some of the folks leaving “Muslim Day” could try thinking about that this afternoon."