A Muslim man was the hero of the Paris kosher grocery store siege

Thanks to Barbara Morrill of Daily Kos for this:

"The next time someone blames all Muslims for the actions of terrorists, please point them to this:

"Lassana Bathily, a Muslim employee at Paris Kosher grocery store Hyper Cacher, saved several people by hiding them in a walk-in freezer when a gunman laid siege to his workplace on Friday.

"Amedy Coulibaly burst into the market and opened fire, killing 4 people. He took several shoppers hostage and threatened to kill them if police stormed the printing shop where Cherif and Said Kouachi, who killed 12 people in an attack on the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo earlier in the week, were holed up in a village to the north. 

"Bathily, identified by French media as a "Malian Muslim," helped several customers to safety as the chaos unfolded. 'I went down to the freezer, I opened the door, there were several people who went in with me. I turned off the light and the freezer,' Bathily, 24, told French network BFMTV. 'I brought them inside and I told them to stay calm here, I'm going to go out. When they got out, they thanked me.'"

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Of course.    Muslims that I know personally are gentle, considerate, hospitable, lovely people.   It's always the extremists who are held up as the stereotypes, whether its the ultra-feminine gay men, the butch lesbians, the thuggish hypersexual black man, or the violent Muslim.    

Stereotypes are the scourge of diversity.    Breaking down those generalizations through knowing individual people is the antidote.

Ralph