WASHINGTON
An American Muslim woman, who was on U.S. President Barack Obama's list of "leading Muslim females" in the country, said she was discriminated against on Friday after a flight attendant allegedly refused to give her an unopened can of soda.
“I am sitting on a United Airlines flight in the air 30,000 ft above and I am in tears of humiliation from discrimination,” Tahera Ahmad, Director of Interfaith Engagement and an Associate Chaplain at Northwestern University, posted on Facebook.
According to the post, the flight attendant allegedly refused to give her an unopened can of Diet Coke saying: "We are unauthorized to give unopened cans to people, because they may use it as a weapon on the plane."
Tahera wrote that the attendant brought the man sitting next to her an unopened can of beer.
"So I told her that she was clearly discriminating against me because she gave the man next to me an unopened can of beer. She looked at his can, quickly grabbed it and opened it and said, 'it's so you don't use it as a weapon,'" she wrote.
Appalled at her behavior, she asked passengers around her if they witnessed this discriminatory behavior, but a man sitting in an aisle across from her allegedly cursed her.
"He then leaned over from his seat, looked me straight in the eyes and said, ‘yes you know you would use it as a weapon,’" and allegedly cursed her again.
United Airlines released a statement on Saturday afternoon, following a boycotting campaign against the company.
"We are reaching out directly to Ms. Ahmad to get a better understanding of what occurred during the flight," the statement read. "We are also discussing the matter that Ms. Ahmad describes with Shuttle America, our regional partner that operated the flight."
