After ISIS took credit when a Somali Muslim man stabbed numerous people at a St. Cloud mall, a restaurant owner in the town of Lonsdale, Minnesota displayed a sign saying “Muslims Get Out.” The backlash was immediate, with one woman attempting to remove the letters from the sign and others protesting that the sign to be removed entirely.
Not all the backlash has hurt business, Treats Family Restaurant owner Dan Ruedinger told CBS News, claiming that business had increased so much that “he had to call in three extra workers on Monday.” He added: “It’s time that people started standing up, not worrying about the PC crowd and do what is right, and I feel what we’re doing is right. We are not targeting the Muslims in general, just the extremists. And that’s all I can say. It’s my right and I’m going to stand up, and I wish more people would do it.”
On Tuesday, September 19, 2016, Ruedinger was visited by Jaylani Hussein, executive director of the Minnesota chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MN), Pastor Craig Breimhorst, of Faribault, and Bashir Abdi, from the Islamic center in Faribault to discuss the sign. Lori Nickel (Lonsdale News) reported that the men claimed they wanted to “start a dialog” with Ruedinger but the discussion was cut short when “Ruedinger soon became agitated with the men and began shouting about his son’s service in Iraq and how he could not be a part of a ‘silent community’ any longer.”
Ruedinger told the Star Tribune: “Our problem isn’t with the entire Muslim population,” he said after meeting with Hussein. “It’s with the extremists and the nut jobs…Anyone who wants to come in here (to his restaurant) can. No matter their ethnicity or race, if they come in here and be nice, I don’t care what their race is.”
Andrea Mayer-Bruestle
Andrea Mayer-Bruestle is a former writer for Alpha News.
