The Muslim World Day Parade

Susan Slyomovics’ article, while focusing on the Muslim New York City population, sheds light as well on other population groups within the city, and the interactions among them. In this class, we have discussed definitions and experiences of diversity and multiculturalism, and this essay interestingly, while assuming to analyze the Muslim’s Parade, broadens to analyze various other groups, in relation to their participation in or influence of, that group’s parade. To begin with, I noted that the parade is called a “World Day” Parade, connoting a unification across countries and cultures. The defining factor of the Parade is in promoting the Muslim community, not discriminating across ethnicity. American, African, Asian, Hispanic, and Middle Eastern Muslims gathered, in various forms of Muslim attire, on floats representing various places of Muslim significance, carrying signs primarily in English, fully representing the spectrum of Muslim influence. That members of other religions, such as Christian and Jewish, and of other affiliations entirely, such as the Irish and African American bands, participated in the parade’s procession, and that New Yorkers in general participated as viewers gave the parade a sense of multicultural respect. That the parade marched along the streets of Manhattan, further reinforced that sense, as Manhattan is the epicenter of America’s melting pot. Slymovics’ detailed history of New York City parades informs of the influences the various ethnic parades have had on each other, and as well informs of the significances of the various ethnic groups, as reflected in the placement of their parades on the city grid. The grid itself seems to be a forum for the city’s diversity to flourish, pocketing communities here and there, connected and separated by the grid-lines. That “New York City is a city of parades,” as one of the parade organizers was quoted as saying, reflects the city’s nature as a house for diverse populations. Thus,  Slyomovics’ article does more than just expose readers to the Muslim population’s parade, for, more than representing merely the Muslim population in America, their parade represented the Muslim World population, and the extent of the interweaving of different populations of the world, as can only be fully displayed in America, the home of both universality and diversity.

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