French restaurant refuses to serve hijab-wearing women

LONDON: Two hijab-clad Muslim woman were reportedly thrown out of a high-end French restaurant after the owner refused to serve them arguing that "all Muslims are terrorists".

A video of the incident that took place at a restaurant in the Paris suburb of Tremblay-en-France has gone viral and it shows the restaurateur apparently refusing to serve two Muslim women.

In the video, the man tells the hijab-wearing women, "Terrorists are Muslims and all Muslims are terrorists", BBC reported.

The incident took place at Le Cenacle restaurant on Saturday night. However, the man yesterday apologised to a group who had gathered outside.

He said he had "got out of hand" due to the current tensions around the issue of wearing burkinis on French beaches, but also because he had a friend who had died at the Bataclan concert centre attack last November, French newspaper Le Parisien reported.

The local prosecutors' office told the paper that it had opened an investigation into racial discrimination.

The video inside the restaurant appears to have been covertly filmed by one of the women, who were clearly emotional.

"We don't want to be served by racists," one of them said. The man retorted: "Racists don't kill people...I don't want people like you at my place. Full stop."

Government Minister Laurence Rossignol was quoted as saying that she had asked Dilcra, a government anti-racism body, to investigate, describing the behaviour as "intolerable".

The incident comes amid the burkini ban controversy in France. A court ruling on Friday overturned France's controversial burkini ban on civil liberties grounds, but some local authorities have vowed to keep it in place.

French anti-Islamophobia organisation CCIF said it is offering legal and psychological support to the two young women and appealed for no protests outside the restaurant itself.