BOSTON (AP) – Workers at a McDonald’s restaurant in Massachusetts deliberately spread bacon on a fish sandwich that a Muslim woman ordered for one of her children, a civil rights group said Wednesday.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations has filed a discrimination complaint on behalf of the woman with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination.
“It is well known that Islam forbids Muslims to eat pork,” the indictment said. “McDonald’s employees willfully added bacon to the complainant’s food in an attempt to insult, humiliate and cause distress to the complainant and her young children.”
The complaint is the first step in the process of seeking monetary damages, said Barbara Dougan, a CAIR attorney. She also hopes it will prompt McDonald’s to better train its employees to prevent a similar incident in the future.
“Religious discrimination in a place of public accommodation is not only illegal, but also morally reprehensible,” she said in a statement.
An email requesting comment was left at McDonald’s headquarters in Chicago. A message was also left with someone who answered the phone at Gomez Enterprises LLC, which operates the McDonald’s restaurant on Meadow Street in Chicopee.
The experience prompted one of the children to ask his mother if “they hate us.”
“McDonald’s made my children and I feel unwanted and worthless by deliberately stuffing a fish sandwich full of bacon for no other reason than to punish us for our faith and religious beliefs,” the woman, Ghadir Alahmar, said in a statement. . “This really hurt us. My children now wonder if they are welcome in their own country. They ask me, ‘Did they hate us?’ How should a mother answer that question?”
Alahmar, who is wearing a hajib and an abaya, entered the store on June 29 last year with her seven-year-old twin sons, the indictment said. She ordered a regular fish sandwich and had one of her kids repeat the order for an employee in case they couldn’t understand her accent.
They received their order, which included chips and cookies, and left the restaurant to walk to a nearby schoolyard where they planned to eat. One of her sons saw the bacon.
Not only did the bun contain bacon, but it turned out to have extra bacon on it, according to the complaint.
They didn’t eat the bacon, but one son, according to the complaint, ate the bottom half of the sandwich and part of the fish fillet.
Alahmar’s husband returned to the store later that evening with the uneaten portion of the sandwich and was refunded the purchase price.
