Yesterday was the Annual Muslim Family Day in USA announced by ISNA/ICNA. All over the US, they reserved “Six Flags America” theme parks solely for muslims and made tickets available to all muslim brothers and sisters through Islamic centers, Islamic schools and Halal grocery and superstores….

I thought that maybe this is a good time for me and my family to get together with muslims of USA and know them more. So we decided to go 🙂

Saturday morning was heavily clouded and as expected, it started pouring around mid-day. That was the time when we are waiting for our last bus on the route. Talking about the route, not having a car is always a pain. This time, it involved a bus, a train, another train and then another bus.

When we reached SFA at Bowie, it was already raining. Rushing towards entrance, trying to get least effected by rain, we couldn’t help noticing the large number of people already there and still coming. I don’t think I saw this number at Eid Prayer, maybe because there are several small centers catering for prayer and this park was to accomodate all Muslims of DC and Maryland.

Things were really nice irrespective of all the rain coming down from heavens above. We could see muslims from every region of the world. As expected, people talking in Punjabi and Urdu were of more interest for my wife and kid on their first gathering among muslims. There were bazars with bangles, jewelry, and dresses from almost all regions. Then there was an area full of stalls serving all kind of Halal Food. You could any kind of food from region specific items to typical fast foods.

Some of the portions of the park were closed due to rain that was getting heavier every moment. All other areas were full of kids and elders alike. Most of the people were interested in rides involving some kind of free fall or all kinds of weird angles of hanging in the air. For us, Due to Armaghan, we enjoyed every ride bu just watching others and hearing them scream 🙂

By the way, did I mention that our rides in parks of Pakistan are more frightening then what they have got here? Seriously, couple of new rides in Joyland are too good to handle 🙂

Anyways, we could enjoy the train that circles almost all the park and we enjoyed heavy lunch and after all that we were ready to leave. These 9 hours, 6 in travel and 3 in park, were fun even without enjoying the rides in rain as everyone else was doing.

I really like the concept and efforts of ICNA/ISNA to arrange this kind of events to make muslims of US get closer to each other and know each other better. I hope to see more events like this in future but in less rain 🙂