Culture Clash

Last Friday my office held its annual picnic. You know what that is - the annual opportunity to spend quality time with the people you already spend more time with than you do with your family, except you have to bring food and you get a sunburn and mosquito bites. Here's some of the food:

For the second year in a row, we held our picnic at Pohick Bay Regional Park, a very nice, shady location near the water with plenty of picnic tables, room for a volleyball net and horseshoe pit, nearby toilets (after age 50, you look for that first), and a really spectacular new, multifaceted climbing gym for the kids.

We had the usual loud, raucous picnic. It was a beautiful day, full-contact volleyball and tug-of-war were played, the water balloon toss was as wet as ever, and a grand time was had by all.

But there was one incident that made me think a little bit about the clash of cultures in modern-day America.

Late in the morning, another group arrived at the park and set up a picnic in the area adjacent to ours. These people were obviously Muslims, as the women were all dressed from head to foot in long, black robes and headscarves (in spite of temperatures in the mid-80's). They kept to themselves and were very quiet in contrast to our happily hysterical antics. The incident that got my attention, though, happened late in the day when I walked over to the children's climbing gym to deliver a message to one of the ladies of our group, who was supervising her child at play. As I approached the gym, three or four young girls from the Muslim group - all easily distinguished by their dark robes and headscarves - immediately stopped playing and returned to their tables.

I don't think I looked particularly threatening, and I never made any attempt to talk to, much less look at them, but somehow they seemed to view me as - if not a threat, then at least as an undesirable interloper. I know from my study that Muslims are enjoined, either by the Koran or by the hadiths (things Mohammed and his friends supposedly said and did) to never mingle or make friends with infidels, because we'll pollute their pure religion, and I also know that Muslim women are supposed to be "modest" and to avoid any contact with men to whom they are not related. But to see children having fun break it off and leave simply because I walked up to speak with someone else sent me a powerful message. That message was: we don't want to have anything to do with you.

Perhaps I'm overreacting, but I don't think so. People used to come to this country because they wanted to be Americans and to enjoy the freedoms and opportunities it offered. Now, Muslims come and want only to remain in their tight little communities, interested only in maintaining their medieval beliefs and imposing them on everyone else. We are, after all, only infidels, and the Koran says it's all right to kill or enslave us if we don't choose to see the peaceful Islamic light.

They've done a marvelous job of screwing up the Middle East. I hope we don't allow them the opportunity to screw up America as well.

And it's a shame that I had to think about this in the context of a happy summer picnic.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo