Shameful Day @ Shea
Published by Haseeb July 6th, 2006 in Islam, Personal, SportsAfter a great long holiday weekend of softball, beautiful weddings, great barbecues, and entertaining world cup soccer action, I capped off tonight with a trip to Shea Stadium to catch the Mets take on the Pirates.
Alhamdulillah it was a great game. In fact we got in for free in the picnic area with printed emails from the Flushing-Flash (mets e-mail newsletter). We made it early enough to catch batting practice. One Homerun in BP was hit right between Talha and Zeeshan, yet they both interfered with other and the ball was then deflected right behind them. Usman got down on all fours to go for the ball and grabbed it away from a 7 year old kid. I wish i had taken a picture of that. Lol but Usman then gave the ball back to that little kid.
Once the game started, the Mets had a red-hot start. In the bottom of the first, Jose Reyes led off with a triple, and scored on Paul Lo Duca’s hit. Beltran then got on with a walk. (Three NL All-Stars!) The Mets went on to score 5 runs that inning. The rest of the game was quite slow though, as those were the only five runs of the game. The Mets won 5-0 - by the way this was the Mets’ 50th victory this season! (Pictures from todays game are posted in the photos section)
Great game… right? Well not Wright - our MVP David Wright didnt play that game. I really wanted to see him play. Oh well, another day inshallah.
And oh yea, one more thing happened. We got outted by security and were held to be questioned by the police for praying Maghrib salat.
Thats right, usually I just let one nearby Shea Security person know that I will be praying in a certain secluded area in some corner of the stadium. And we did just that today. We prayed ‘Asr without any problems; in fact the security guard we gained permission from even assured us that “If we had any problems to just come to me [him]“. However, when maghrib time arose, we went to the same area to pray and we were given permission again. However this time, once we said salaam and completed salat we found about 6 Shea Stadium officials lined up behind us. At first, I didnt think anything about it, as I went to say thank you on our way back to our seats, but they told us we had to wait as they called the police to come question us. One official in particular, a Mr. Bruce Smith, told us it was “standard policy” to call the police to question anyone who does anything like that. (however, i have prayed several times in the past at Shea, without any problems). So we ended up waiting 15+ minutes in front of these officials just for the police to arrive to “question us”. In fact, when the police came, they had nothing to ask of us besides what we were doing (praying) and just looked at our IDs and let us go and told us to “enjoy the game”, and apologized for the inconvenience - they also never heard of this “standard policy”. Moreover, later that night i called Shea Security to ask if such a policy existed, and they said no! I dont know what is up with Mr. Bruce Smith, but this was definitely uncalled for and he should be held accountable for this. He claimed it wasnt discrimination but I certainly beg to differ. I wrote Shea Stadium a letter earlier tonight, and i have copied it for you below.
Click Image above to read my letter that I wrote to Shea Stadium.
16 Responses to “Shameful Day @ Shea”
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from: United States us
Pingback on Aug 24th, 2006 at 10:49 pm
Well they stopped you because you were Muslim.
this is why the mets stink…
Stinks. Sue them.
You should get compensated with season tickets…and an autographed baseball signed by David Wright, which I will take…thank you.
I honestly think that you should speak to CAIR.
Secondly we in the community can even sponsor an action alert through CAIR and get thousands of signatures and telephone calls to Shea stadium. Set a precedent. Ages ago I was detained in Yankee Stadium and they asked me if I knew if any future terrorist events were going to happen. They then apologized and said it was standard procedure.
Still though something has to be done.
That’s just disgusting! I can’t believe you would be subjected to such treatment simply for praying in a public place!
That’s ignorance at its best. Hey, take this to the top if you have to. A small legal step goes a long way.
The worst part about the whole ordeal was feeling like we did something WRONG…and standing with our IDs out so Mr. Smith can see as people pass us by …
but the 1 thing that irritated me the most was fact that even IF they had a problem with us praying (which they shouldn’t to begin with but nonetheless…) they should have TOLD us that we cannot pray in such and such area and we would have complied. We would have went to the parking lot.. if worse came to worse.. prayed in our cars. I don’t see the logic in granting us permission then questioning/harrasing us for it afterwards.
Even the cop who came.. agreed he didn’t understand why there was a problem esp if we asked permission.
It seemed to me that Mr.Smith was the one with the beef… because as Haseeb says.. the other security gaurds had NO problem whatsoever. infact when i went to ask a security guard after Usman and Haseeb went for Asr… he almost dismissively told me ” hey don’t even worry about it.. do your thing… your friends jus came and prayed here ” … which was refreshing… and i expressed my grattitude to him.
Also.. … there was another lady along with Mr.Smith ( who dissapered after a few minutes ) … the lady told us.. that “…if I was watching the area I wouldn’t have had a problem.. but maybe some one who is new might. ”
or Mr. Smith IMO.
i applaud ur reaction
As soon as I said the salaam for the ending of salat and saw those security dudes gathered up behind us, I knew somethin was up.
I haven’t really felt discrimination like this before. It was like a wake-up call for me. I must admit though I did not feel surprised or even too violated until the day after. I guess all this media linking Islam to terrorism and all these stories with all these young brothers getting in trouble has put a feeling of linked guilt on me from the outside perspective. Forgive the run-on sentence and I hope you understand what I am trying to say. But yea, upon reflection, it is not at all acceptable. As Haseeb said in his letter, we are Americans, most of us at least
, whether we like it or not.
We should not expect to be treated different, or should we? I don’t know, I sometimes try to put my selves in the shoes of the ignorant many who don’t know what we are doing when we are kneeling with our heads on the ground while 40,000 people are enjoying a boring Mets game. Anyway, much respect to Haseeb for sending the letter and like Ammad said, we should insha’Allah
set a precedent so it doesn’t happen in the future. PEACE
I had a similar incident on the LIRR. You really should talk to CAIR. They made a big deal out of it when the same thing happened at the Giants Stadium, and insh’Allah
they’ll make the stadium rethink their policies if they have any, or make it known not to do the same thing again. Maybe one security guy acted on his own, but a company-wide memo saying not to do that will help.
salaamoalekum
I agree that you should definitely contact CAIR about this asap. Remember they set up a chapel at giants stadium after a similar incident happened there last year I believe.
Also, CAIR’s mailing list is amazing, they are really responding well to all such incidents. http://www.cair-net.org/
that’s really effed up bro, feel bad that you had to endure such an experience. like some other brothers had suggested, makking a big deal out of the situation with news and media and all that jazz would definitely make them rethink thier policies and a certain someone could lose their job for for giving Shea a negative image. But i believe u did the right thing, mad hikma in that decision. damn bro, i don’t know how u kept cool, i woulda been pissed.good job, and inshaAllah , who knows, Shea stadium might end up making a prayer room for us!
The METS ARE RACIST
All Muslims should boycott the Mets
The Yankees love all Muslims and people of all faiths.
lol