The owner of Treats Family Restaurant in Lonsdale, Minnesota, put up a sign Monday that said “Muslims Get Out,” and, on a second line, “In Suport [sic] of St. Cloud,” according to the Minneapolis Star Tribune. A second “p” was later added.
After local resident Joe Reyes posted a picture of the sign to the Lonsdale Happenings Facebook Group, the sign went viral, causing protests and vandalism, although Ruedinger told CBS News that his business was up so much Monday afternoon that he had to call in three extra workers.
Lonsdale saw a media blitz on Tuesday, with outlets all over the state reporting on the sign. Ruedinger told all of them that he refuses to take the sign down.
Ruedinger said that his message is not directed at all Muslims, despite the blanket statement on the sign. He told Minnesota Public Radio that he would have put the word “extremists,” but he didn’t have the right letters and the word wouldn’t fit on the sign.
“We did not intend to offend anyone but it’s quite clear that apparently we offended a great many. But we also have at least as many, if not more people that support us, because there are millions and millions of Americans that feel the same way,” Ruedinger said in a video on the Star Tribune.
On Tuesday, Jaylani Hussein, the executive director for the Minnesota Chapter of the Council On American-Islamic Relations met with Ruedinger in his restaurant.
“This is nothing to do with Muslims in general,” Ruedinger reiterated. “I think they came with good intentions. They invited me to the mosque. But people need to again understand our problem isn’t with the entire Muslim population. It is with the extremists, and the nutjobs,” he said.
“The word ‘Muslim’ in this case reflects about millions of Muslims that live in the United States and hundreds of thousands that live in Minnesota who are shocked, appalled about the incident and tragedy that took place in St. Cloud,” Hussein said in response to the sign. “These types of messages do not help bring us together — instead they create more anxiety.”
An editorial on a Minnesota Public Radio blog wrote that the sign epitomized both free speech and hate speech.
Lonsdale is a town of about 4,000 residents and is about a hundred miles south of St. Cloud.
