Justice

What Happened When One Man Went on an Islamophobic Rant on a Crowded Subway

June 16th 2016

A Facebook post describing how a crowded New York subway stood up to a ranting Islamophobe is resonating with a lot of people on the social media platform.

SubwayFlickr/Dan Dilworth - flickr.com

On the Monday following the Orlando shooting, New York resident Amaira Hasan shared a Facebook post about encountering a loud man who berated two Muslim women wearing hijabs on her morning commute. Hasan, who told DNA Info that she is a practicing Muslim but doesn't wear a hijab, wrote that the angry man came onto the "extremely packed train" and shouted that he wanted the "two terrorist foreigners to go back to where they came from."

"These two 'terrorist foreigners' were two (understandably terrified) hijabi Muslim women," Hasan wrote.

  

Hasan wrote that before she could say anything to the man, "the entire train erupted in anger." She wrote about the encounter:

"A black man, a Romanian, a gay man, a bunch of Asians, and a score of others came to their defense demanding that this man leave these women alone and get off this train. The man insisted that the two women go back home and take their bombs with them."

Finally, a male passenger said something that shut the Islamophobe up.

"'This is New York City,'" Hasan quoted the passenger as saying. "'The most diverse place in the world. And in New York, we protect our own and we don't give a fuck what anyone looks like or who they love, or any of those things. It's time for you to leave these women alone, Sir.'"

Hasan added that the Islamophobe got off at the next subway stop, at which point everyone started cheering.

"I say all this to say that in light of all the bad happening around us, remember that there's so much good and so much love," she wrote.

Hasan's post has been shared nearly 30,000 times and received many positive comments:

FacebookFacebook - facebook.com

Hasan wrote in a follow-up post on Wednesday that some have expressed doubt that New Yorkers would be so friendly to two strangers on a train, but Hasan insisted that she has seen many acts of kindness in the city despite the stereotype that New Yorkers are impolite.

"To those that don't believe New Yorkers would stick up for their own, or shut down hate or bigotry, sorry, but, you don't know my New York," she wrote. "I appreciate every ounce of love my post received-I was so bewildered by the attention and wanted it to go away (and still sort of do lol), but it's nice to know that among all the horrible rhetoric that's floating around right now, especially about Muslims, this is floating around, too. New York raised me and so did Islam. And today, I couldn't be more proud of both of these things."

[H/T APlus]

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