A Chicago writer’s recent encounter with Islamophobia on a public bus has gone viral through a Facebook post. Sharareh Delara Drury was showered with racial slurs and told to “get off the bus and leave the United States”. The incident, which occurred last week, has been shared more than 75,000 times online.
Drury wrote about the experience, traveling home from a job she loves and emphasizing that she was born in America. She said the man called her derogatory names and told her she was “the root of the country’s problems”. After politely asking the man to leave her alone, he continued his tirade, spitting on her. She objected again, raising her voice, and the bigoted man was finally ejected from the bus with the help of the driver.
She concluded by stating that although the man’s abuse went on for some time, no one intervened until she screamed. Sadly for Drury, who is half-Iranian and raised in Boston, the incident was not a new experience for her. Her looks are distinctly Middle Eastern, and she is often assumed to be a Muslim although she does not practice the religion. Her father survived the September 11 attack on the World Trade Center. This fact does not discourage the harassment.
Understandably, she said she is weary of people looking down on her and her family and placing blame on them for the terrorist attacks 14 years ago. The flames of this unfair discrimination are currently being fanned by the inflammatory speech of political candidates along with the December 2 shooting in San Bernardino that was carried out by a married couple sympathetic to ISIS. It needs to stop. Evil people are defined by their evilness, not their religious or political ideals, and especially not by skin color and heritage.
