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Anti-Muslim group mistook bus seats for burqas and got absolutely destroyed online

Picture:
Picture:
Sindre Beyer/Facebook screengrab

What's your favourite optical illusion? The duck that is also a rabbit? The bride and the elderly woman? The burqa and the bus seat?

An anti-immigration group in Norway has apparently mistaken the head covering for just that.

On Wednesday former politician and current marketing executive Sindre Beyer shared screenshots taken from a closed group on Facebook.

The group's name, 'Fedrelandet viktigst' would be 'Fatherland first' in English.

It showed a photo posted to the page by someone with access to the 13,000 strong group, Johan Slattavik.

Slattavik's post was the inside of a bus, but he captioned it:

Hva tenker folk om dette?

Which roughly translates as 'What do people think of this?'

He told WorldNews that his post was done as a prank.

I laid out the photo to see what happened.

Some of the commenters read the image correctly, and identified it as an empty bus.

Many however called the sight 'tragic' and 'frightening', with one person warning that 'they' could be hiding stolen goods, or weapons and bombs.

It looks really scary, should be banned. You can never know who is under there. Could be terrorists with weapons.

Beyer's post, shared now over 1,700 times, read:

What happens when a photo of some empty bus seats is posted to a disgusting Facebook group and nearly everyone thinks they see a bunch of burqas?

Beyer told Norwegian news Nettavisen:

I’m shocked by how much hate and fake news is spread there. The hatred that was displayed toward some empty bus seats really shows how much prejudices trump wisdom.

That’s why I shared the post so that more people can see what is happening in the dark corners of the web

The confusion was complimented by another prankster posting the same photo on a Swedish language anti-Muslim page.

HT The Local, Buzzfeed News, the Independent​

More: A map of the countries where women are banned from wearing the veil

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