Disturbing video captured a traveler harassing a Muslim woman wearing a hijab at a Florida airport – calling her a terrorist and snapping pictures of her for a report to the FBI.
Salma Khan, 27, told the Miami Herald she was about to board a flight to Phoenix at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport on Monday night when she noticed a man glaring at her.
“I’m a visible Muslim woman. I wanted to make him comfortable, so I introduced myself,” Khan told the news outlet.
She said the man told her he was “happy this was happening,” but appeared to want to remove her head covering so she asked him to leave her alone.
Two strangers then rushed in and sat on both sides of the woman to shield her from the menacing man, who proceeded to call her a terrorist and claimed she and other Muslims hate the US.
Video posted on TikTok shows the man pointing his camera at Khan, the two people at her side — a white woman and a black man — as well as a third good Samaritan, who said they were just “celebrating Thanksgiving.”
Khan told the Herald she was upset by how long it took authorities to help her.
After 10 minutes, a Broward Sheriff’s Office deputy escorted the man away from the gate before he was booked on a later flight, according to the news outlet.
Khan complained that police never took her name or a statement.
“It does hurt a bit, during such a helpless time, that people in power didn’t step in to help,” she told the Herald, saying it was instead left to civilians to help.
“I [didn’t] want to give power to his hatred,” Khan told the Herald.
She added that bystanders later told her that the man had followed her around the airport as she shopped before her flight.
Ramona Flowers, who posted the three-minute video on TikTok, told the paper she began recording after noticing that the man was reaching for Khan’s face.
She said she also overheard him making Islamophobic comments.
In the video, Flowers is heard shouting at the man to sit down, but he continued to take photos before sitting right next to the group.
Three Spirit Airlines agents were busy boarding flights at the time of the incident, but one did try to call security, Flowers said.
A TikTok user who identifies people caught on video while in public and has almost two million followers a has helped the video go viral.
“This is, unfortunately, nothing new,” the influencer, known as Danesh, said in his video. “I remember being a kid 20 years ago and this being very normal.”
The Post has reached out to the Broward Sheriff’s Office and Spirit Airlines.