Mohammed Abdullah and his wife, Aminah Knight, have organized an annual Eid celebration at Epic Waters in Grand Prairie since 2024. The first two events at the city-owned waterpark went off without a hitch.
“One, financially it brings a lot of money to the park, but two, there was never any incidents,” Abdullah told KERA. “Families were happy. People were happy.”
But this year was different. Abdullah, a chaplain and imam began to notice negative chatter online – specifically about the event’s flyer, which, just like in past years, read “Muslims only.”
“Because of our dress code, our modest dress code, Muslim families and Muslim women in particular don't usually get the opportunity to do that,” Abdullah said. “Because, you know, people might look at them funny. And so normally, Muslim families wouldn't go to water parks.”
He said no one would have been turned away, but organizers changed the flyer to instead say “modest dress only.” But it had already caught the attention of Gov. Greg Abbott, who called the event “religious discrimination” and “unconstitutional.”
He said it violated a new state law, House Bill 4211, banning “Muslim only no-go zones” in Texas. He ordered the city of Grand Prairie to cancel the event or lose more than half a million dollars in state funding.
KERA reached out to Abbott’s office and the city of Grand Prairie for this story but did not receive a response.
“There's people who are out there as agitators just looking for anything to use as like political bait to then say, ‘look at this’ and create a fuss about it,” Abdullah said. “So, you know, Muslims are under attack. That's why this got picked up.”
Community organizer and politician Zeeshan Hafeez said he didn’t agree with the initial wording on the flyer – but said events can be held to cater to the Muslim community.
“Should an event be canceled because they made a mistake on a flyer that was a matter of terminology — absolutely not,” Hafeez said. “I think the response does not meet the mistake that was made.”
He said what happened with Epic Waters is the “latest in this pattern of anti-Muslim rhetoric by Greg Abbott.”
“Why does Greg Abbott need to get involved with a Muslim celebration of Eid?” Hafeez said. “Basically, would it make any sense for him to go and get involved in a Christmas celebration where kids are just going there to have fun in a water park together? Why would you want to cancel that?”
Texas state Rep. Jessica Gonzalez, who represents House District 104 where Epic Waters is located, said other events at publicly owned venues haven’t come under the same scrutiny. In a letter to Abbott, she and 40 other Democratic state lawmakers pointed to similar private religious events held at city venues without issue: In 2023, the letter said, a church in Grapevine privately rented NRH20 — a city-owned waterpark in North Richland Hills for a closed student ministry event advertised as not open for the public. And this month another church in Colleyville is hosting a family night at the same park — for church members only.
Gonzalez said she reached out to Grand Prairie city officials when she heard they had canceled the event at Epic Waters. She believes the governor didn’t have the authority to threaten funding, but understood the city was in a difficult position.
“I can see why these cities have to really make a hard decision on what to do to see, because who knows if the governor will actually follow through with doing that,” Gonzalez told KERA.
Michael Phillips is a retired history professor from Southern Methodist University who now works with Human Rights Dallas. He called Abbott’s threat “an obvious separate and unequal application of law here.”
"Republicans had sold themselves as the party of local government and small government--and under this Republican regime that's now three decades old in Texas, we have seen this centralizing of power in Austin, and particularly in the hands of the governor,” Phillips said.
Muslims have become a scapegoat in Texas, Phillips said. The state has launched multiple investigations into a proposed Muslim-centered housing development in unincorporated Collin and Hunt counties – investigations civil rights groups have said amount to religious discrimination.
“If Muslims are stripped of their religious liberty... if they begin to be told they can't use city facilities, if they can't develop planned communities, etcetera, they're not going to be the only group that suffers from that, "he said.
Civil rights activist Hadi Jawad, who is Muslim and works with Phillips at Human Rights Dallas, said the anti-Muslim rhetoric is unfair and dangerous. “It is putting lives at risk,” he said.
“I think the first thing, and this is something that is immediate, that must be done is for the top ranking Republican officials in the state of Texas to apologize for the words that they have leveled against an innocent Texas Muslim population," Jawad said. “They owe Texas Muslims an apology."
Mohammed Abdullah said he has yet to receive an apology from the city.
He and his family still don’t know why exactly their event was canceled. He said the people most affected by the whole ordeal were the children who had been looking forward to the pool party.
"We just don't understand what the issue was and why it couldn't be rectified,” Abdullah said. “If you don't want the flyer to say this, we changed the flyers, it said something else. So where do we move?”
Abdullah said he still plans to bring the annual event back for families to enjoy next year – but it won’t likely be at Epic Waters.
Priscilla Rice is KERA’s communities reporter. Got a tip? Email her at price@kera.org.
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