A blindfolded Muslim offered hugs to people in front of a memorial in Manchester, just days after a bombing killed 22 people and injured over 100.
Baktash Noori, a Muslim video blogger, stood next to a sign that said “I’m a Muslim & I trust you. Do you trust me enough for a hug?” in St. Ann’s Square, Manchester, where people placed flowers memorializing the victims of the May 22 terror attack at an Ariana Grande concert, according to Al Jazeera.
WATCH:
“I’m Muslim and I trust you.” This young man opened his arms to the people of Manchester. pic.twitter.com/QjOnp3ZkCq
— AJ+ (@ajplus) May 30, 2017
“There’s always going to be a couple of idiots, anomalies, I guess you could call them,” Noori said. “I don’t want us as a community, as a religion or race to be judged incorrectly.”
The video blogger said he has received only positive feedback, with people thanking him and tearing up at the gesture.
Noori’s experiment has been replicated in the past. Muslim teenager Yusf Pirot gave out hugs in Nottingham, UK, in November 2015. Muslim convert Craig Wallace, who went by Muhammad Mujahid Islam online, posed with a similar sign in Westminster, asking if people trusted him “enough for a hug” in the fall of that same year. A week later, he was arrested for threatening to bomb the house of British Tory MP Charlotte Leslie, who voted for airstrikes in Syria.
“I’m going to find her and show her what it’s like to murder innocents,” Wallace had written online, according to The Daily Mail. “You dirty pig-fucking whore.”
The Daily Caller News Foundation reached out to Noori for comment, but received none in time for publication.
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