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Coffee shop refuses to serve customer over 'racist' comments to Muslim woman in headscarf

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A California coffee shop refused service to a customer last week after he insulted a Muslim woman and her headscarf.

According to KTLA-TV, the video was shot inside of a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf store in Riverside, California on Friday. The video opens with a man standing in line for coffee.

"I said, 'Is this Halloween or something?" the man says.

"Why did you say that?" the woman filming asks.

"Why wouldn't I? Why wouldn't I?"

The woman filming the encounter then pans over to show herself wearing a niqāb, a Muslim headscarf worn by women that covers all but a woman's eyes.

"What's wrong with me?" the woman asks again.

"I don't know, you tell me what's wrong with you," the man says.

 

 

The woman then asks why the man has a problem with Muslims.

"I don't like it, how's that? I don't like that because I don't like your religion because it says you'll kill me and I don't want to be killed by you. How's that?"

After a short back-and-forth about the Bible and the Qur'an, the man says he doesn't "have any kind of conversations with idiots."

The video ends when a Coffee Bean employee tells the man he will not serve him because he was "disrupting a public place and being very racist." The man leaves the store without further confrontation.

The video gained national attention on Friday when it was shared on Twitter by journalist CJ Werleman. The video in his tweet has been viewed 1.7 million times as of Tuesday.

Alex Hider is a writer for the E.W. Scripps National Desk. Follow him on Twitter @alexhider.