Bus Driver Under Investigation for Blasting Quranic Verses on Aix-Marseille Route

About fifty passengers on the Aix-Marseille shuttle were forced to listen to Quranic verses at full volume from front to back by a driver on line 50, reports France Bleu Provence. Unbearable for the passengers. "You have no right to inflict that on us!" fumes one of the passengers in anger. "You don’t respect secularism, you have no right!" indignantly exclaims another at the back of the bus, an Algerian retiree. The young driver - a young recruit from a subcontractor - did not appreciate these reproaches: "It’s my bus! I do what I want. If you’re not happy, you get off."

The driver’s sharp and spontaneous response silences the passengers. Only the Algerian retiree tries one last time to bring him back to reason and elicit a reaction from the other passengers. "These are verses, it’s religious. Doesn’t it bother anyone about secularism?" No reaction from the other passengers. The bus starts. The broadcast of the prayer continues for the 40 minutes of the journey to the Saint-Charles station, the sole soundtrack of the bus.

Once off the bus, the Algerian retiree expresses his anger again. "This reminds me of Algeria, with the FIS (dissolved Islamic Salvation Front). The Islamists, they used to play this in the buses. It’s forbidden today in Algeria! And I hear that here. We have to react. This young man, when he does that, he’s boosting the National Rally!"

Questioned, the driver denies having played Quranic verses through the bus speakers, but only on his phone. For his part, Paul Sillou, general manager of RDT 13, assures that he is "in the process of gathering elements as part of a disciplinary procedure concerning him."