Pennsylvania: Restaurant asks waitress to remove hijab, restaurant is inundated with death threats
BY LARRY ESTAVAN
Republished below in full unedited for informational, educational, & research purposes.
Michael’s Family Restaurant in Glenside, Pennsylvania has been receiving death threats all day. Hundreds of threatening phone calls have reduced the owner’s mother to tears, and the restaurant is pleading for people to see reason.
This all stems from a manager who sent a waitress home when she would not remove her hijab. Michael’s Family Restaurant has since fired the manager and apologized. But as WTXF reporter Ellen Kolodziej says, that might not be enough, as protesters began to assemble outside the eatery.
Listening to Tameka Beverly, the aunt of the employee, it is not clear if her niece wore the hijab to the job interview.
Her first day she wore it. She showed up for training, she wore it. Then they told my sister she couldn’t wear it when she came back, but she wore it anyway. In no way should anybody be discriminated against and made to feel less and pushed into a corner where they have to remove their hijab.
The combination of a televised hijab crisis involving a restaurant strongly suggests the presence of the Hamas-linked Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR).
Indeed, when WPVI ABC6 read a statement from the restaurant, the station omitted the last sentence.
Michael’s Family Restaurant in Glenside released a statement Saturday:
“Michael’s Family Restaurant has been serving Glenside for over 15 years and have always taken pride in our quality of service, respect for our customers, and the diversity of our employee and customer base.
A video posted online on Friday, April 7, 2023 recorded one of our employees violating the values of our establishment. Our leadership team evaluated facts of the case and we would like our community to know that, effective Friday April 7, 2023 this employee is no longer affiliated with Michael’s Family Restaurant in Glenside.
We thank everyone who reached out to our Restaurant to record their disappointment. We share their sentiments and would like to underline that we value and respect every background that we proudly serve, including our Muslim-American customers. We are saddened that this incident disrupted their peaceful observance of the month of Ramadan. Needless to note, our beloved employee will be able to work here with her khimar should she wish to do so.
Additionally, we commit to meeting with Muslim-American community members to listen to them and also have our staff go through a sensitivity training to ensure an incident like this never repeats.”
The last sentence read:
We will work with CAIR-Philadelphia and other leaders to achieve these goals.
This is the second TV attack by CAIR this month and the eleventh of the year. Which is on pace for over 30 incidents this year.
This year’s victims so far: