A Muslim taxi driver in New York told his passenger he’d not been able to pick up a fare for hours after the attacks in Paris.
He broke down in tears as he told Alex Malloy, 23, he was his first passenger in two hours, as people were suspicious of his Muslim faith, the Daily Mail reported.
Malloy described the incident – at about 11pm on Friday evening, hours after the tragic attack in the French capital – as the ‘saddest moment he has experienced.’
He spent the rest of the journey reassuring the driver that he wasn’t alone, and that people would support him.
Malloy tweeted about the experience, asking his followers to ‘stop generalizing people’. He wrote:
For 25 minutes I had to tell this stranger, this human being like you and I, that he was not a part of what was happening and how sorry I was people were looking at him with fear or anger.
He kept saying “Allah, my god, dos not believe in this. People think I’m a part of this and I’m not. Nobody wants to drive with me because they feel unsafe. I can’t even do my job.’
It was the most heart breaking moments I’ve ever experienced in my whole life.
The emotional exchange left both men in tears for the whole journey, which Malloy spent assuring the driver that most people didn’t feel this way about Muslims.
The attack in Paris has led to fears that hate crime reprisals against Muslims could become more frequent.
According to the Mail the number of hate crimes against Muslims grew massively post 9/11, from between 20 and 30 a year in the U.S. before the attack, to 500 afterwards.
Turning Western society against Muslims is exactly what ISIS want – to help boost their narrative of ‘Us vs. Them’, and further radicalise more young people.
Don’t let them win!
