sourceMuslim customer files discrimination complaint after barista in Target store writes 'ISIS' on her cup
A Muslim woman in St. Paul, Minn., has filed a discrimination complaint against Target after she said a barista at an in-store coffee shop allegedly wrote "ISIS" on her drink order instead of her name.
The 19-year-old woman - who asked to be identified by only her first name, Aishah, out of fear for her safety - said she was wearing a hijab and face mask when she ordered a beverage July 1 at the Starbucks inside the St. Paul-Midway Target. She repeated her name slowly and multiple times to the barista, according to Jaylani Hussein, executive director of Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who provided The Washington Post with a copy of the complaint filed Monday with the Minnesota Department of Human Rights.
But when her drink was ready, the acronym for the terrorist group Islamic State of Iraq and Syria had been written on the cup. Aishah raised the issue with a supervisor, but Hussein said her grievance was dismissed. The cafe's supervisor told her, "Mistakes sometimes happen with customers' names," according to the complaint.
"There is absolutely no way she [the barista] could have heard it as 'ISIS'," Aishah told CNN. "Aishah is not an unknown name and I repeated it multiple times."
She said she was given a new drink and a $25 gift card before being escorted out by store security.
Target in a statement said it was "very sorry for this guest's experience at our store" and said representatives "immediately apologized to her when she made our store leaders aware of the situation."
"We have investigated the matter and believe that it was not a deliberate act but an unfortunate mistake that could have been avoided with more clarification," the statement continued. "We're taking appropriate actions with the team member, including additional training, to ensure this does not occur again."
A Starbucks representative declined to comment but confirmed the employees involved worked for Target and not Starbucks.
Hussein said Target's apology doesn't go far enough.
"This is a visibly identifiable Muslim woman. She speaks fluent English without an accent. She has a name that's commonly known and known how to spell," Hussein said in a phone interview. CAIR has asked Target to fire the 16-year-old barista who took the order and the cafe's supervisor.
The term ISIS, he said, is sometimes used by middle- and high-school age children as a racial slur around the Twin Cities, which has a large East African and Somali Muslim population. Six Minnesotans ages 19 to 21 were arrested in 2015 trying to join the terrorist group.
Since then, a mosque in Bloomington, Minn., was bombed and others have been defaced by vandals. In 2016, a gunman shot two Muslim men on their way to their mosque for Ramadan prayers.
"Target should know better," he said. "They have their headquarters here in Minnesota. They have interacted with this community for almost 20-plus years. They have a large percentage of Muslims who work for them. And Islamophobia has impacted Minnesota disproportionately for a number of years. We've had bombings. We have issues in the schools.
"It doesn't make any sense to me that Target sees this incident and tries to brush it off in light of all the things that have happened in Minnesota. I thought they'd have a stronger response," Hussein said.
I'm outraged! A public lashing is definitely in order for the 16 yr old barista and Target should be ordered to give her free coffee for the rest of her life. We must put an end to offensive thingies in this country.
Trying to get uneducated teenagers to spell everyone's name correctly seems to be a recipe for inadvertent offense and disaster.
