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Sydney Hostage Crisis: #IllRideWithYou Gains Popularity As Commuters Pledge To Support Muslims

By Nathan Francis
Published on: 03:53 PST, Dec 15, 2014

The Sydney hostage crisis has sparked a movement among the city’s commuters to protect Muslim riders from harassment, with the hashtag #IllRideWithYou gaining popularity worldwide, and leading to hundreds of thousands of tweets in just a few hours.

The sentiment was a response to the hostage crisis in Sydney, with an apparent Muslim extremist taking hostages in a popular cafe.

Sydney residents said #IllRideWithYou was a way for them to support Muslims, especially those wearing traditional Muslim garb, from harassment on the city’s public transportation.

“I saw one tweet that was just a very small act of kindness to a frightened Muslim women on public transport and it pretty much broke my heart,” Tessa Kum told BBC News. “And it just seemed like something that there should be more of in the world. I can’t say that I planned this at all. It has been amazing to watch this take off.”

Many of them left specific times they would be traveling.

The #IllRideWithYou movement was also tied to other acts of kindness.

But the campaign was not popular with everyone. In the wake of the Sydney hostage crisis, many criticized the idea or looked at it as a way to deflect blame from the perpetrators of the siege.

But even after the Sydney hostage crisis ended, the #IllRideWithYou movement remains strong, with thousands of new tweets each hour.

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