Elham Asaad Buaras

A Woman’s Facebook post claiming she was Islamophobically abused by a National Express driver has gone viral.

Yusra Ahmed says she was travelling with three friends from Manchester earlier this month when they were “humiliated and victimised” by the coach driver.

20 year-old Ahmed said it began when the four girls “received hostility” when the driver checked their tickets.

“She analysed each of our tickets and coach cards very closely which is something we noticed she didn’t do to any of the other passengers,” Ahmed wrote.

The driver then asked if they had any hot food in their bags, to which they replied they had only cold lasagne and rice.

“She then shouted quite loudly that we were not allowed to eat on the coach and that we had better not be taking ‘curry’ on to her coach.”

“I told her that we weren’t intending on eating on the coach but she continued shouting to us about stinking up her coach with curry,” wrote Ahmed.

“We offered to give the takeaway food to the homeless outside and put the remainder of it in the luggage section but she kept banging on about our ‘smelly curry food’.

“By this time we had lost our patience with her, we weren’t carrying any curry or ‘smelly food’ at all.

“She was obviously targeting us of her preconceived ideas about brown people, we were visibly Muslim so this made it easier for her.”

When Ahmed complained that the driver was being racist, she says the driver exploded in rage and said the women were not allowed to travel on the coach.

But when a security guard came along to see what the fuss was about, Ahmed says she and her friends were forced by him to apologise to the driver for calling her racist.

They then had to wait until the next coach which didn’t depart until two hours later.

Ahmed said no apology was made by National Express and despite being told they would hear back from them within three days that they had received no contact.

Others have been turning to Twitter to show their support for Ahmed and question National Express over it.

A spokesperson for National Express told The Muslim News: “We take reports of unacceptable behaviour very seriously are investigating the issues raised by this serious complaint as a matter of priority.”