French Restaurant Owner Tells Women Wearing Hijabs To 'Get Out'

The moment was captured on video and shared widely.

A French restaurateur appeared to be refusing to serve women wearing the hijab on Saturday night in a video that has been widely circulated online.

“We don’t want to be served by racists, sir,” one woman can be heard saying in the video, which was captured by someone sitting at the table and does not show any faces.

“Racists don’t plant bombs and don’t kill people,” the owner of Le Cénacle restaurant, which is in Tremblay-en-France, responded.

“Because we planted bombs, sir?” she asked.

“I don’t want people like you here,” he said. “Get out. Terrorists are Muslims and all Muslims are terrorists.”

The tweet reads: Young people in Tremblay demand an explanation from the #Cenacle restaurant owner following his Islamophobic comments.

A handful of people gathered outside of the restaurant Sunday to demand an explanation from the owner. He came out and apologized several times.

“I’d like to apologize to the entire Muslim community,” he said in a video captured by newspaper Le Parisien. “I freaked out; I’m scared of everything that’s happening these days.”

He admitted that his opinions on Islam and extremism are “mixed up” because a friend of his died the night that terrorists attacked the Bataclan concert hall in Paris last November.

The police department has since opened an investigation and women’s rights minister Laurence Rossignol has called upon the delegation that combats racism and anti-Semitism to look into the incident.

Tensions have been high this summer in France due to an ongoing debate over religious liberties and the French conception of separating church and state.

Several towns across the country decided to ban the burkini, a swimsuit typically worn by observant Muslim women that covers one’s arms and legs.

France’s government claimed it was a measure enacted to protect women from being harassed for their religion, while critics have lambasted it as a blatant violation of women’s rights.

The country’s top administrative court ruled on Friday to suspend the ban, but several towns continued to enforce it over the weekend.

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