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WALL STREET JOURNAL, URBAN GARDNER: Ralph Gardner Jr. gets a taste of Muslim cultures from around the world
There are few occasions when I wish I was 3 years old. But I did during a visit to the Children’s Museum of Manhattan’s new exhibit called “America to Zanzibar: Muslim Cultures Near and Far.” One of the attractions is a vividly decorated Pakistani bus that you can hop into and go for a pretend ride.

There’s also a replica of an Indian Ocean dhow, a boat with steering wheels that you can spin and a conveyor belt that moves its cargo of coconuts from the hold to the deck.

I was told the vessel also boasted something described as a “multisensory exploration” of the cargo hold. But I was too large and feeble to attempt to enter the space where it was located. Plus, I’d probably have traumatized all the kids I’d have to push out of the way.

The show is the fourth in the Upper West Side museum’s Global Cultural Exhibition Series, intended-as the name suggests-to create global citizens. And I can attest, from both observation and ancient personal experience, that the best way to broaden horizons isn’t by lecturing kids about being better people but by letting them climb into, over and through things.

Also, letting them play dress up, a pastime I never embraced but that my daughters were crazy about. The exhibit includes a Senegalese fashion nook where you can don all sorts of colorful fabrics, inspired by the West African tailors of West 116th Street.

It’s part of the exhibition’s souk, or marketplace, where you can pretend to buy and sell spices, ceramics from Turkey and rugs from Morocco.

If I have any criticism of the exhibit, it’s that nowhere can you learn how to haggle. And in my travels to that part of the world, haggling was an indispensable skill.

And for parents and caregivers convinced their children would prefer to stay home playing computer games, there’s an eye-popping interactive architectural experience. It allows you to visit mosques around the world, inside and out, as their images are projected onto a 21-foot curved screen.

I feared the place might be deserted late on a weekday afternoon. That just goes to show how out-of-tune I’ve become with the rhythms of New York City childhood. The place was packed, probably because the city’s public schools were on midwinter break.

“It’s educational for parents, for children, for everybody,” said Nissim Chekroun, who was tagging along behind her daughter, Sarah.

The show includes lots of stuff for grown-ups, too. The “American Home” area is filled with objects donated by American Muslims. Among them is a photo of a group of children with Muhammad Ali at Chicago’s Sister Clara Muhammad School in the early 1980s.

“I remember him doing all kinds of little magic tricks for the children,” remembered Precious Rasheeda Muhammad, an author and historian, on her wall text.

Arwa Gunja, executive producer of Freakonomics Radio, included her soccer cleats, the bejeweled headpieces she wore as a young girl on holidays at her Islamic Center, hair straightener and her jean shorts.

“My parents were traditional and insisted we cover our legs and dress modestly outside the house,” she wrote. “But I rebelled and would sneak out of the house with shorts underneath a pair of pants that I would tear off once I got to school.

I could relate. My parents forced me to wear short-pant suits to school long after my classmates graduated to trousers. So I’d sneak a pair of long pants in my book bag.

What unites us is greater than what divides us.

Nonetheless, Hussein Rashid, the exhibit’s lead academic adviser, agreed that much of the content in the “American Home” section would go over the head of the average toddler.

My final stop-I was hoping to visit, virtually, the Islamic Cultural Center of New York on the Upper East Side, but some little girl was hogging the controls in the architectural area-was a spice cart where children were grounding up cinnamon, coriander and mint and turning them into tea. It wasn’t bad. If only there had been a nice slice of baklava to go along with it.

By RALPH GARDNER JR.