A former US State Department official has said sorry for a vile rant he unleashed on a Muslim food vendor but insisted he is not Islamophobic.
Videos have gone viral of Stuart Seldowitz, who lists himself as the director of the National Security Council under former US President Barack Obama on his LinkedIn profile, berating a man selling food in New York.
The 64-year-old can be heard calling the vendor “a terrorist” and calling him ignorant for his knowledge of English.
At one point Mr Seldowitz asks: “Did you rape your daughter like Muhammad did?” He also says: “What do you think of that – people who use the Quran as a toilet?”
After a brief conversation about children being killed (presumably in the Israel-Hamas conflict), Mr Seldowitz says: “If we killed 4,000 Palestinian kids, you know what? It wasn’t enough.”
Several clips were posted, one appearing to take place at night and two others during the day.
Each time, the vendor asks him to leave but he refuses, one with the comment: “It’s a free country — it’s not like Egypt.”
this man is continuing to berate and harass the halal cart vendor. He ends the video with “if we killed 4,000 palestinian kids? It wasn’t enough”. pic.twitter.com/yhu4HSvIEZ
— Layla 🪬 (@itslaylas) November 21, 2023
Mr Seldowitz has since apologised, telling the New York Times that the vendor had reportedly expressed support for Hamas.
The former official said: “At that point, I got rather upset and I’ve said things to him, that in retrospect, I probably regret, though — that I do regret.
“Instead of focusing in on him and what he said, I expanded into insulting his religion and so on.”
But he went on to deny being Islamophobic, adding: “I’ve worked with Muslims. I have many people who are Muslims and Arabs and so on, who know me very well and who know that I’m not prejudiced against them.”
Mr Seldowitz was announced as foreign affairs chair at Manhattan-based lobbying firm Gotham Government Relations in November 2022.
But the organisation has since severed ties with him, saying on Tuesday that he had not contributed any work to the company in recent years.
"The video of his actions is vile, racist, and beneath the dignity of the standards we practice at our firm," a statement said.
Founder and president David Schwartz said: “I’ll represent the food vendor pro bono if he wants to bring a lawsuit against Stuart Seldowitz. I’m absolutely outraged by this video.”
