10-Year Old Booted From Bus For Speaking Arabic
31 October 2013
5 Comments
10-Year Old Booted From Bus For Speaking Arabic
Via TYT (TheYoungTurks)
“A new lawsuit filed Friday in Brooklyn Federal Court charges that a 10-year-old Brooklyn boy was called a “terrorist” and banned from boarding a bus when he recited a Muslim prayer in Arabic after losing his MetroCard. According to the family’s lawyer, Hyder Naqvi, the boy was trying to board a bus home from school in Sheepshead Bay in October 2012 when he realized he’d lost his MetroCard. He recited the following prayer in Arabic as he searched for, and found, his card: “I stand in the name of God the most merciful, the most beneficent.” After hearing him do so, the driver became angry, called the boy a “terrorist,” and slammed the door shut…”.* Ana Kasparian and Cenk Uygur break it down on The Young Turks.
*Read more here from LACEY DONOHUE / Gawker: http://gawker.com/mta-bus-driver-bans-10-year-old-boy-from-bus-for-speaki-1453804519
So unless that bus driver boots anyone off his bus who is speaking a language other than English, and calls them all “terrorists”, he’s at the very least guilty of discrimination. I would urge his employer to suspend him and send him to training in the Constitutional right of free speech. Unless the boy was attempting to communicate directly with the bus driver when he was speaking Arabic (considering that he way praying, he communication was meant for God, though), the bus driver was making a decision based on his own personal prejudicies and stereotypes. Although our lingua franca in the United States is English, that does not prevent polyglots from communicating amongst themselves or from engaging in acts of worship in their preferred tongue.
4 November 2013 at 2:46 pm