A story came out a few weeks ago about a very upset Muslim woman who was tricked into tasting a bit of pork in a straw, allegedly placed there by a TGI Friday’s employee. The consumption of pork is unlawful in Islam. Nicole Queen is a convert to Islam who was looking to enjoy a meal at TGI Friday’s, and seemingly right off the bat the servers were treating her differently, and not in a good way. “According to Queen, she and a friend ducked into the TGI Friday’s eatery at Firewheel Town Center in Garland Tuesday to grab a quick salad. The woman wrote that their server gave them a chilly reception, leading Queen and her companion to believe ‘he did not want us at his table.'”
Nicole sent back a Cobb salad because it had bacon in it, a request her server seemed unhappy about. After her meal was done, a different server came to her table and asked if she needed a refill. She was suprised at this because nobody had ever offered her a refill. The server gave her a foam cup with a straw already in, and as Nicole wrote on her Facebook page: “‘I got in the car and took off the top wrap and took a sip,’ Queen wrote on her Facebook page. ‘Instead of tea I got a mouth of BACON!!!'” A complaint to the management went unanswered as the manager denied any such act. Within hours of this story breaking out, TGI Friday’s Facebook feed was barraged with comments of customers, both Muslim and non-Muslim, voicing their clear disapproval of the restaurant not only offending a customer’s creed, but the inaction by the management.
However, despite your initial reaction to this story, some objectivity is required. I am a Muslim myself and while reading this story did make me feel upset, I must acknowledge the fact that there is no concrete evidence and that neither side has any proof that their side of the story was the truth. So instead of jumping to conclusions, I think we should focus on the one thing that is a certainty and that truly disturbs me.
Regardless of what really happened, there are still the comments on these articles that are a little unnerving but I cannot honestly say I did not expect to see. While there are people condemning the potential hateful actions of the TGI Friday’s employee, there are many people that, despite the fact that it happened or not, would have little problem if this actually happened to a Muslim woman. I decided not to grace certain, blatantly Islamophobic websites that reported this article with an extra visitor, but the comments on the Huffington Post tell enough of the story. One user was simple in his bigotry and commented, “good!” Other users said, “I think she made it up because that’s what Muslims do. It’s part of making the rest of us cow tow to their beliefs.”
Something tells me that if it was anybody else of any other belief, they wouldn’t say such a thing.
But who am I to assume? As a Muslim I recognize I might need thicker skin when reading these comments. I won’t focus on the negativity, but I’ll focus on the fact that there were more people defending a woman’s right to be able to eat wherever she likes and not have to be treated poorly or slickly served a forbidden meal; by doing so it restores my faith in humanity. It doesn’t matter if Nicole’s story is straight or not. What matters is the principle of it all. Respect all beliefs.
Wow, how ignorant. When people are given the strength to hide behind their keyboards and computer screens, there’s no filtering what they can say. The nicest of people become bullies, and the strongest of corporations are weakened. Like you said in your post, people will continue to say what they say based on their own biased opinions, and this is all without knowing the complete details of the situation. In this day and age, people definitely should be more accepting, but alas, they are not. I do think that the TGIFriday’s management should respond, instead of declining to respond because declining to respond sometimes shows guiltiness.