This man was abused for appearing on a Welcome to Heathrow poster. Then he met his trolls

A single social media post turned what had been one of Syed Usman Shah's "proudest moments" into one of the most overwhelming and upsetting.

It started when Shah, 35, was approached by Heathrow Airport to be part of their "Welcome" campaign.

The airport selected 38 successful Londoners whose smiling, waving images would be used on large posters at Heathrow to welcome visitors to the city.

Those chosen included a Beefeater, a Wimbledon umpire and others with prominent London jobs or who worked at tourist spots.

Shah's poster shows him waving while holding a small basket of dates in his other hand. That is because he's an entrepreneur and owner of The Date Sultan stand at London's Borough Market, where he sells fair-trade dates.

He leapt at the chance to become one of the faces of the Heathrow campaign and describes the moment his parents saw the posters at the airport as "one of the highlights of my life".

"For me, it was a pinch-me moment," says Shah. "I just saw the glitter in my Mum's eyes, and my Dad turns around and said to me, 'Son, I'm extremely proud of you.'

"The two of them said it was the happiest day of their life."

But then at 04:00 one morning Shah started receiving messages and phone calls.

"Usman, have you seen you're going viral? You're going viral for the wrong reasons."

A photo of Shah's poster had been posted online - and the replies were flooded with racial abuse.

"It was someone basically saying, 'What is the image of a brown person doing on Heathrow Airport?'" Shah explains, "and what followed was vile racial abuse - we're talking in the thousands of comments."

The UK "is under siege", wrote one user.

"Nauseating. Welcome to a [expletive] 3rd world country," said another.

A third comment read: "It's almost a crime to be white!!"

Shah says that because he was dressed in traditional clothing when photographed for the poster, people assumed he was Muslim, which resulted in most of the messages being targeted towards his faith.

"There were comments saying London is becoming Londonistan, that it's been conquered by Muslims."

Shah's image had been shared across multiple social media platforms, viewed millions of times, and the abuse kept coming.

As he scrolled through the comments, he says he felt his "heart sinking lower and lower - and lower".

"People were judging me based on my appearance, my religion, my name, the fact that I'm selling dates.

"I have never been subjected to that much abuse in my life.

"I stood in the kitchen and my missus said to me, 'Hey Usman, I've never seen you look like this before', and I just burst into tears."

Shah was one of eight people from an ethnic minority background to be featured on the Heathrow posters. Another Muslim who took part - a successful sportswoman - received so much abuse she asked for the posters of her to be taken down.

Heathrow offered to do the same for Shah, but he told them he wanted the posters of him to stay up.

"I'm not going to lower my head when I'm being targeted with this," he says.

Instead, Shah decided to tackle the abuse head on.

Driven by what he describes as his "Islamic values" and the teachings instilled in him by his parents, Shah replied to some of the people who had sent him abusive comments.

"I don't judge you for them, I don't hate you for them," he told them. "Rather I forgive you for them."

Shah offered free dates to people if they'd come to the market to meet him.

"I just want to spread love rather than hate."

Several people came to apologise, he says, including one woman who gave him flowers and told him she felt ashamed about what she had done.

Shah is not alone in experiencing abuse based on his faith. In the latest government data, there had been a 19% rise in religious hate crimes targeting Muslims from the previous year, with a spike in August 2024, coinciding with the disorder that followed the Southport murders.

Over the last two years, there have been assaults, violent attacks on mosques, and anti-Muslim rhetoric from prominent figures on the far right.

But there's also been renewed scrutiny of issues within Muslim communities, and how well integration has happened.

There are questions about how well successive governments have engaged with Muslims to deal with issues in their own communities, and Islamophobia from outside.

"Everyone should feel safe and welcome at Heathrow, and we utterly condemn the hateful comments we have seen," Heathrow's Chief People Officer, Jo Butler, says.

"We stand alongside everyone included in this campaign and we are reassured to see so many people come out in support of those who received abuse online."

Despite what he's been through, Shah says he feels proud to be British.

"This country made me," he says. "I learned everything in this country. I was fed in this country. I was educated here. I was given opportunity by Great Britain.

"I'm proud to be a British Muslim of Pakistani descent."

Shah's story is featured in A Place in Politics for British Muslims on BBC Radio 4.