Earlier this week, BlazeTV host Sara Gonzales blasted a Muslim-only event for taking over a water park in Grand Prairie, Texas — and Governor Greg Abbott (R) swiftly threatened to pull funding from the city and shut it down.
What initially caught Gonzales’ eye was the event flyer, which said “Muslims only” twice. The flyer was later updated to say “modest dress only” once it became a topic of controversy.
“I want to just set the record straight, because I know there’s been a lot of confusion. You did have the ‘Muslims only’ on the original flyer, and then you changed it and updated it on the site to read ‘modest dress only,’ correct?” Gonzales asks the organizer of the event, Dr. Aminah Knight.
“Absolutely, absolutely,” Knight responds.
Knight explains that in years past, the flyer has only been circulated privately and never caused any issues until now.
“A few days ago, the New York Post contacted me, and they said, ‘Hey, did you know that your flyer in this event is going viral?’ And I’m like, ‘What are you talking about?’” Knight tells Gonzales.
“And then my husband also let me know, ‘Hey, there’s this guy who, he’s kind of historic for having Islamaphobic rhetoric, to be honest. He got ahold of the flyer, and he is saying, “Oh my gosh, the Muslims are doing this event. They’re trying to exclude people” and X, Y, and Z,'” she continues.
“And so I quickly changed the flyer,” she adds.
“It does read like you were trying to exclude non-Muslims, and I just wonder, you know, I know that you feel like you were wronged in this, but I just wonder if you feel like it would be fair for, say, a private group to rent out a publicly funded water park and put on, you know, their posters, ‘This is for whites only,’” Gonzales argues.
Knight responds that unlike white people, marginalized groups like the black and Muslim communities “oftentimes need to take a moment to gather, fortify each other and then go back out into the world.”
She also tells Gonzales that at the heart of the event are young Muslim girls, whom she wants to inspire to dress modestly in a society where the “standard of beauty that they see around them has to do with how sexy they are and how much of their skin they can show.”
“My question actually was how is this any different than … a whites-only, you know, KKK party at a publicly funded water park?” Gonzales says, pointing out that there are discrimination laws under which you cannot have private events that exclude people based on religion.
“So how do you think that that’s OK?” she asks.
“Muslims uphold a modest dress code, and we’re celebrating our EID events. … I didn’t think anything was wrong with that,” Knight responds, later telling Gonzales that she did not expect Gonzales to “be so aggressive.”
“By asking if it would be OK if we could do a whites-only event as well and how that was different?” Gonzales asks.
“It’s just your tone,” Knight says.
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