22-year-old Savannah Demers and 19-year-old Michelle Kennelly face backlash for Islamophobia social media posts.
Social media accused Demers and Kennelly of mocking a Muslim girl wearing a hijab at an Amazon Prime event for the premiere of Lena Dunham’s film Catherine Called Birdy.
In a video shared to her Instagram Story, Demers filmed herself with Kennelly with a blanket over her head.
A Muslim girl in a headscarf was sitting behind them and using a phone in the video they uploaded. The now-deleted Instagram story quickly began to go viral online, with social media patrons criticizing the couple for allegedly teasing the Muslim girl.
“The woman I am sitting next to [the woman in the hijab] is not an influential person. She came to this event not to tease or ridicule. She came to the event to enjoy the event to which she was invited.”
The backlash comes amid new information from the UK’s Work from Home Authority, which reveals Muslims face 42% of all more serious hate crimes against religion in the U.K.
In addition, a survey of 1,000 American adults by the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, found that 76.7% of Muslim women have had private encounters with Islamophobia.
Demers and Kennelly each responded to the backlash. In a video shared with their TikTok followers on Sunday, October 9, Kennelly denied mocking the woman.
1 comment
Your article helped me a lot, is there any more related content? Thanks!