BRIDGETON • A Taco Bell employee has been fired after she made Islamophobic statements to a customer whose video of her profane comments went viral on social media.
The man was ordering food from a Taco Bell at 12420 St. Charles Rock Road to eat before beginning daily fast during Ramadan, a holy month of fasting and spiritual renewal for Muslims.
The Missouri chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations called on Taco Bell to apologize for the employee's "obscene rant."
“I am utterly appalled by this ugly display of anti-Muslim bigotry and ignorance,” said Faizan Syed, executive director of CAIR-Missouri. “Taco Bell needs to take this incident seriously, apologize to the customer and immediately implement cultural competency training for all of their staff.”
A video of the encounter the man posted to Twitter received thousands of views. He said he went to the Taco Bell after work to order food and had a long conversation with the employee, during which she insisted "ALL Muslims are terrorists." The man could not be reached Friday for comment.
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The video shows that after handing the man his food, the woman cursed him and said that Muslims "torn down my country and killed thousands of my people, so you need to change my mind and I’m not going to cater to you, you’re going to need to cater to me 'cause this is on my territory."
Around 1am after a busy day at work & not being able to eat from a long day of fasting for #Ramadan, I went to @tacobell to buy some food for suhoor (pre-dawn meal/breakfast) but, ended up having a 25 minute debate with this worker who insisted ALL Muslims are terrorists. #STL pic.twitter.com/ChV98eTMYl
— Tarek (@arab_lovin245) May 14, 2019
The employee was fired and the owner of the Taco Bell location reached out to the man to apologize, the company said in a statement Friday.
“We welcome everyone in our restaurants and do not tolerate this type of behavior," a Taco Bell representative said in a written statement. "This is a franchise location and the team member involved no longer works for this franchisee. The franchisee has reached out to the customer to apologize.”
The incident is part of an increase nationwide in discrimination and hate crimes against Muslim-Americans, according to CAIR-Missouri. The group on Monday joined activists at an interfaith rally calling for the resignation of a Metro East community college board chairman over Facebook posts they said were Islamophobic and xenophobic.