,,,in the United States of 2015 ”” weeks before the terrorist attacks in Paris and San Bernardino, Calif. ”” someone had insulted and implicitly threatened…[Heba Macksoud] in her favorite ShopRite. It felt to her as if all the toxic language of the Republican presidential campaign, with its various forms of Islamophobia, had infiltrated even a store she cherished for its commitment to diversity.
With Ms. Yu at her side, she went to the Customer Service counter to report what had happened. The agent there called for the store’s assistant manager, Mark Egan. “I’m not done shopping,” Ms. Macksoud recently recalled telling him, “but I don’t feel safe here.”
Mr. Egan was about as much of a Jersey guy as a Jersey guy can get. He grew up in Freehold, Bruce Springsteen’s hometown, and married in the young Springsteen’s parish church, Saint Rose of Lima. Mr. Egan, his hair starting to thin at 43, has worked at ShopRite for 13 years.
He told Ms. Macksoud he would protect her.
Its rather hard to take this article seriously. Christians cop this sort of treatment all the time, in Christian countries! Actually, so does everybody else. Even supporting a particular football team can get you called some very nasty names – not by everyone of course, but there is always an unpleasant minority.
I am sorry she had to go through this, and glad that the store manager stayed with her while she shopped. But lets put this in context: Its a story that occurs probably every day in Australia at some point, and I am sure in the USA also. Occasionally Muslims are the butt of it, but more often its others.