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A theme park was forced to shut its gates to visitors when a mass brawl broke out after Muslim women were banned from rides unless they removed their headscarves.

Two park rangers were injured and 15 people, including three women, were arrested in the scuffle at Rye Playland in New York yesterday. They have since been charged with disorderly conduct and assault.

Muslim visitors involved in the fight accused police of brutality and claimed they were treated 'like animals'. One said: 'It's clear, this all happened because we're Muslim.'


[The guards] were beating down the girls, then they started beating down the guys as they came to their aid,' Lola Ali, 16, of Queens, told the Journal News.

The incident started at around 2pm when the theme park was crowded with around 6,000 visitors. Roughly 3,000 were in a Muslim tour group celebrating a holiday at the end of Ramadan.

Trouble reportedly flared when women wearing Muslim hijab scarves tried to get on rides banning any head coverings.



Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/new...s.html#ixzz1WcYLt58b

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Peter Tartaglia, deputy commissioner of Westchester County Parks, said the Muslim American Society of New York was warned in advance of the rule barring head scarves on rides for safety reasons.

"Part of our rules and regulations, which we painstakingly told them over and over again, is that certain rides you cannot wear any sort of headgear," Tartaglia said. "It's a safety issue for us on rides, it could become a projectile."

Many Muslims were given refunds as they left the park disappointed.
FM
Muslim Leaders Criticize Police Response to Scuffle
By DAN BILEFSKY
Published: August 31, 2011
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CloseLinkedinDiggMySpacePermalink Muslim civil rights leaders on Wednesday accused the authorities of using excessive force after a Westchester County amusement park’s restrictions on head coverings provoked a scuffle a day earlier that led to the arrest of 15 people.

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Tara Abadir
A woman was restrained on Tuesday when an altercation broke out at Playland amusement park in Rye, N.Y., over restrictions on head wear.

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Park’s Rules on Scarves Are Cited in a Melee (August 31, 2011)
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Suzy Allman for The New York Times
State, county and city authorities responded to the disturbance.
About 3,000 visitors from a Muslim tour group were at Playland park in Rye on Tuesday afternoon celebrating the end of Ramadan when a dispute erupted after women wearing traditional hijabs, or head scarves, were told they could not wear them on certain rides, for safety reasons.

Among the rides that headwear is prohibited on is the Dragon Coaster, on which riders plunge 128 feet before being hurled into the mouth of a smoke-emitting dragon. However, headwear, including the hijab, is allowed on the Double Shot, in which passengers, harnessed in cars, are rocketed up an 85-foot tower in less than two seconds before being shot back down at a nausea-inducing force of what the park says is “negative-one G.”

Park officials said Wednesday that the women were offered admission refunds, but that an altercation ensued when clutches of displeased visitors became agitated and began to argue among themselves and then with park officials, including two rangers who were hospitalized with injuries.

Peter Tartaglia, deputy commissioner of the County Parks Department, said that two people were charged with assault and that 13 were charged with disorderly conduct. All had been released by Tuesday night.

Mr. Tartaglia said the Muslim American Society of New York, which organized the outing, had been warned of the headwear rule, which he said was a safety precaution to ensure that items like caps and head scarves did not get entangled in mechanical parts. On Playland’s Web site, he noted, rides that allow what the park calls headgear are clearly indicated with the letter H.

“This is all about safety, not about religion,” he said.

Mr. Tartaglia recalled an April 2010 episode in Sydney, Australia, in which a 26-year-old mother wearing a hijab was strangled after her head scarf became tangled in the wheel axle of a go-kart. In another incident, in Buena Park, Calif., in 2000, two dozen people were stranded on a roller coaster for about three hours after a rider’s jacket flew onto the track and became wedged under the train.

Cyrus McGoldrick, civil rights manager at the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday that the authorities had overreacted. He said 60 patrol cars and 100 police officers from nine departments had responded to the disturbance, which he said had involved 40 people at most. He said video taken during the episode showed the police pushing at least one Muslim woman to the ground.

“There seems to have been a disproportionate response in which police used excessive strength and force to subdue female protesters,” Mr. McGoldrick said. “That had a snowball effect on the antagonism and aggression that ensued.”

Sharif Aly, vice president of the Muslim American Society of New York, said it was investigating the episode to determine whether the group had been singled out for being Muslim.

Mr. Tartaglia said that nearly 6,000 people were at the amusement park at the time, and that police intervention had been necessary to ensure public safety. “The incident was very quickly escalating,” he said, “and the police had no choice to interfere, or it could have turned into a riot.”

David Mandt, spokesman for the International Association of Amusement Parks and Attractions, whose members include Disney World and the company that operates the attractions at Coney Island, said it was not unusual for amusement parks to require guests to remove or secure loose articles, including head scarves or hats of any kind.

Kristin Siebeneicher, a spokeswoman for Six Flags Great Adventure in Jackson, N.J., said that for safety reasons, no loose articles were allowed on rides. But hijabs, which are typically securely wrapped around the head, are allowed, she said.

Ms. Siebeneicher said that those wearing the hijab were advised to exercise caution on Six Flags’ most “extreme” ride, the Kingda Ka, a 45-story roller coaster that she said was the tallest in the world and the fastest in North America, going from zero to 128 miles per hour in 3.5 seconds.

“Because that roller coaster is so extreme, we require that head scarves are tightly fastened,” she said. “But we are more than happy to have them along on the ride.”
Chief
quote:
Cyrus McGoldrick, civil rights manager at the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday that the authorities had overreacted. He said 60 patrol cars and 100 police officers from nine departments had responded to the disturbance, which he said had involved 40 people at most. He said video taken during the episode showed the police pushing at least one Muslim woman to the ground.


Muslims need to get real.
Rye is a white people area.
Muslims keep forgetting they are a minority and will never be accepted by a white nation. They will never be able to blend in, but they can't seem to realize this.
FM
quote:
Originally posted by Mad Max:
quote:
Cyrus McGoldrick, civil rights manager at the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said Wednesday that the authorities had overreacted. He said 60 patrol cars and 100 police officers from nine departments had responded to the disturbance, which he said had involved 40 people at most. He said video taken during the episode showed the police pushing at least one Muslim woman to the ground.


Muslims need to get real.
Rye is a white people area.
Muslims keep forgetting they are a minority and will never be accepted by a white nation. They will never be able to blend in, but they can't seem to realize this.


Are you suggesting the Muslims are not for white people.
Your comment suggest that your are more racial than the very people you speak of.
FM

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