Britain’s Muslims at Alton Towers

05 July 2006

Sounds like fun, doesn’t it? Tickets, though, are available only through a company called Islamic Leisure, and the whole business is advertised on the website belonging to the Muslim Public Affairs Committee (MPAC). And quite apart from the antagonism the proposed event has engendered within the godless Kufr press — by which I mean the Daily Mail and the Sun and so on — it has also caused one or two problems for devout Muslims, some of whom think it inappropriate to disport themselves in such a temple of decadence — even if the best of the decadence will have been expunged for 24 hours.

There is a fervent debate taking place right now on the messageboard of the MPAC. ‘Isn’t this haram?’ one correspondent asks, a little plaintively — haram being a word from the Koran meaning the sort of naughty behaviour which Allah really, really hates. Another insists ‘as Muslims we should not have fun’, which is at least commendable for its lack of equivocation. One blogger points out — although he fails to source his information — that ‘The Prophet never went to leisure parks’ and that ‘the money is going to a Kufr enterprise’. My favourite contribution, though, came from a chap who was evidently looking forward to the day out: ‘Let’s hope they add a few more activities like archery and some horse-riding. Oh, and a shoot-the-American-GI game.’ The majority of remarks complained that women were to be allowed to the park at all, never mind being segregated from the men and forced to don the usual sackcloth and ashes. ‘They should be kept in the kitchen,’ one cheerful mediaevalist pronounced.