(JTA) — A Muslim-British businessman was sentenced to 100 hours of community service for an anti-Semitic rant on an airplane last year that he blamed on smoking cannabis during Ramadan.
Shamraize Bashir, 34, of Bradford, in northern England, slurred Jews in June 2017 while standing with friends in the back of an EasyJet flight from Tel Aviv to the United Kingdom. He was also sentenced Monday to receive treatment for his cannabis use, the British newspaper the Daily Mail reported Monday.
“You know the really fat Jewish women yeah? Their job is to let their husbands f*** them and make babies for them,” Bashir had said loudly on the flight. He continued to swear after being asked to stop his rant.
One woman on the flight began crying over the outburst, according to the newspaper.
Bashir was arrested when the plane landed in Manchester.
Bashir told the court on Monday that his rant “was out of character,” and blamed it on his use of cannabis prior to the flight and during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, which requires daily fasting.
The prosecutor told the court that the tirade against Jews lasted up to five minutes and that there were a lot of Jewish people on the flight, according to the Daily Mail.
Bashir’s attorney told the court that his client “had been to Tel Aviv and soaked up the culture, and had also sat and spoke to a Jewish lady for an hour — how could he be a racist?” He added: “No one on the flight was put in any danger and there were no arguments as such, there was no escalation and nothing further happened.”
The judge called the incident “particularly inappropriate” and a “very serious matter.”
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