A man was outrageously told by security officers at a Mall of America to remove his “Jesus is the only way” shirt or leave after shoppers had reportedly complained that the message had left them feeling offended. Footage of the incident in Minnesota was recorded and posted on TikTok, where one of the officers can be clearly heard telling Paul Shoro, “If you want to shop here you need to take off that shirt.”
“Jesus is associated with religion and it is offending people. People have been offended,” he continued, leaving Shoro startled in disbelief. According to the Daily Mail, the incident occurred on January 7 and has sparked such outrage that one group of people are now planning to protest at the mall by wearing their own “Jesus Saves” shirts.
These mall cops kick out a black man for wearing a “Jesus Saves” T-shirt at the mall of America
But if he was wearing a BLM shirt, they’d bend the knee pic.twitter.com/y8HccqqF88— Vince Langman (@LangmanVince) January 17, 2023
I’m not even Christian but this is crazy!! A guy got kicked out of mall of America for wearing a “Jesus saves” shirt. Saying he’s soliciting just by wearing that shirt and he needs to take it off. UNACCEPTABLE #mallofamerica pic.twitter.com/megh2PQI6K
— 🇺🇸🇪🇹 (@MessiNegus) January 12, 2023
RELATED: Mall Of America Victim Identified And Still Suffering With Life Threatening Injuries
A spokesperson for Mall of America went on to issue a statement, saying that the Shoro ended up being “allowed” to remain in the shopping center, despite the officer’s threat to kick him out for his choice of attire. After his video went viral on social media and made national news, Shoro sat down for an interview with ‘Kingdom Bizness’ on Monday, stressing he would have rather gone to “jail or die” than remove his shirt.
In the hour-long video posted on YouTube, Shoro explained the lead-up to his altercation with three security officers, expressing that he had visited the mall to hand out a few gospels tracks along with sheets of paper with scriptures written on them.
“I started going to Mall of America and met tens of thousands of people but they stopped me preaching the gospel,” he said. After getting into a quarrel with the security guard, Shoro stood firmly by his words as he refused to cooperate and remove the shirt because a piece of clothing shouldn’t have led to threats of him being removed from the shopping center, to begin with.
Need a very large group of christians & free speech advocates to show up at mall of America wearing “Jesus Saves” t-shirts. That is what I would do if I lived in northern Somalia. Oops I mean Minnesota.
— Jim Bob (@jim261bob) January 13, 2023
RELATED: UPDATE: Four Suspects Have Been Charged In Mall Of America Shooting Which Left One Person Dead
“When I was asked to take it off I said I would rather go to jail or die than take off my shirt. Some people think we judge them but we don’t. We go out to preach and help these people. I was so nice to them. I know my purpose. I didn’t go there to fight.”
Other shoppers who took notice of the argument came to Shoro’s defense, he claims, telling security that he had a right to freedom of speech and was allowed to wear whatever he wanted under the law.