Dec 16, 2014 2 min read

There were horrors aplenty surrounding the siege of a cafe in Sydney, Australia, Sunday and Monday that culminated in the deaths of two hostages and the gunman, a 50-year-old emigre from Iran who professed sympathies for Muslim extremists and had a lengthy rap sheet.

And among those horrors were Australians who used the event to threaten or harass some of the 500,000 Muslims who live in the Land Down Under, even as hordes of mainstream Islamic organizations rushed to condemn the attack. However, many Australians decided to stand in defense of their fellow countrymen by launching a Twitter hashtag, #illridewithyou, as a way of showing solidarity with Australian Muslims who might be feeling under siege.

It started when one Sydney area resident posted on Facebook she offered to walk along with a woman who had removed her hijab at a train station. She told her to put it back on and she would walk alongside her. The woman who had taken off her hijab reportedly started crying and hugged the woman.

By late Tuesday, the #illridewithyou hashtag was used almost 300,000 times. Even in times of strife, decency and tolerance can still gain a foothold.

As one Twitter user noted, “Every so often you see things like #illridewithyou and realize that maybe humanity does have a future.”