Muslim racially abused by National Express staff

An investigation has been launched after a young British Muslim claimed she was subject to racism by a National Express bus driver. 

Yusra Ahmed, 20, says she and three friends experienced a “racist and islamophobic” outburst by the bus driver who refused them entry on the coach travelling from Manchester to Leeds because they were bringing takeaway curry on board.

The three students who wore visible headscarves allege the white driver treated them with hostility when first inspecting their tickets.

“She analysed each of our tickets and coach cards very closely, which is something we noticed she didn’t do to any of the other passengers,” said Ahmed, a Middle Eastern studies and politics student at Leeds University.

The row then began when the trio tried to board the coach carrying packaged food in carrier bags and were stopped for inspection by the driver. Despite them ensuring the driver, the students claim the driver did not believe they were carrying cold food and doubted their intention of not eating on the journey home.

“She then shouted quite loudly that we were not allowed to eat on the coach and that we had better not be taking ‘curry’ on to her coach,” Ahmed wrote in her viral Facebook post after the incident last week.

“I told her that we weren’t intending on eating on the coach, but she continued shouting to us about stinking up her coach with curry. We offered to give the takeaway food to the homeless outside and put the remainder of it in the luggage section, but she kept banging on about our ‘smelly curry food’.

“She was obviously targeting us out of her preconceived ideas about brown people. We were visibly Muslim so this made it easier for her,” Ahmed noted.

The three women were barred from boarding the coach and were threatened by a security guard after making a complaint. 

The women were made to wait two hours for the next coach and said National Express only responded to them after the Facebook post gained attention.

 “We take allegations of employee misconduct extremely seriously and a thorough investigation into the issues raised by this serious complaint has been undertaken by our senior management team,” National Express said.

“Our clear rules which set out the high standards expected of our professional drivers – as well as our customer service processes – have formed the framework of our investigation into this highly unusual complaint,” it concluded.

Meanwhile, Arzu Merali, a London-based human rights campaigner, believes the latest incident comes against a backdrop of a growing wave of Islamophobia across the European countries, including the UK.

“There has a year-on-year rise in hate attacks against Muslims in most European countries…These types of attacks have been going on for a very long time predating 9/11 and take many forms including discrimination, media representation… Our own figures show that both in the UK and France there are very high levels of physical attacks (against Muslim women)…,” Arzu Merali told Press TV on Friday.    

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