Posted on 10/11/2006 7:37:12 AM PDT by Jean S
A minor issue at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) has potentially major implications for the future of Islam in the United States.
Starting about a decade ago, some Muslim taxi drivers serving the airport declared that they would not transport passengers visibly carrying alcohol, in transparent duty-free shopping bags, for example. This stance stemmed from their understanding of the Koran's ban on alcohol. A driver named Fuad Omar explained: "This is our religion. We could be punished in the afterlife if we agree to [transport alcohol]. This is a Koran issue. This came from heaven." Another driver, Muhamed Mursal, echoed his words: "It is forbidden in Islam to carry alcohol."
The issue emerged publicly in 2000. On one occasion, 16 drivers in a row refused a passenger with bottles of alcohol. This left the passenger - who had done nothing legally wrong - feeling like a criminal. For their part, the 16 cabbies lost income. As Josh L. Dickey of the Associated Press put it, when drivers at MSP refuse a fare for any reason, "they go to the back of the line. Waaaay back. Past the terminal, down a long service road, and into a sprawling parking lot jammed with cabs in Bloomington, where drivers sit idle for hours, waiting to be called again."
(Excerpt) Read more at danielpipes.org ...
Solution: more non-Muslim cab drivers who will drive those fares,rule that a driver who refuses a fare is free to do so, but must go to the end of the line when they make the choice to skip a fare. Public is under no obligation to subsidize their religious scruples, but should allow them to make the choice (and pay the price in lost income and fare pickup opportunity).
How many times are we going to post this article?
Well I, for one, hadn't seen this article and I'm glad it was re-posted.
"I think everyone should carry bottles. Let's keep sending these bastards to the back of the line and letting the American drivers get their fares."
Excellent idea.
Not in Minneapolis..........you have to be Somali to drive a cab at the MPS airport.
Here's my take on it:
Have a taxi supervisor (or a cop) at the pickup point at each terminal. If a cab driver refuses to take a fare for a reason not allowed by law, the supervisor a) sends the driver all the way to the end of the line, and b) notifies the hackney license agency of the violation. The license agency then follows the law regarding suspension and revocation of the driver's hackney license.
There's laws that regulate this stuff, folks. All we need to do is use them.
The difference is between what is legal, and what is ethical.
Ethics vary from person to person, religon to religon and culture to culture. For example, in some cultures it is permissible to treat women as chattle, and discard them at will. Visitors are given free sexual access to the host's wife for the night. Children can be bought or sold. Some religons promote alcohol while others prohibit it.
As long as RU-386 is legal; I see no reason why a doctor or pharmicist can refuse to serve a customer who requests it, and keep their job. Now you and I may find abortion to be the same as murder (and I think we do); however we are a country of laws. We are free to change the laws, but we must operate within the laws. If we allow everyone to arbitrarily super-impose their ethics over our laws - we will have chaos.
This means that the cabbie who works for a cab company has a choice, take the fare and keep the job; or skip the fare and get fired. Engineers can design bombs for the military and keep their jobs, or refuse and get fired. Pharmacyists can dispense condoms, birth control pills and RU-386; or they can work somewhere else.
It's pretty simple, really. We are a country of laws.
After all, there's no reason the already beleaguered airline passenger has to suffer because some stupid Muslims insist on pushing their religious bigotry in people's faces, particularly when it results from a misreading of Islamic tenets.
is this the 10th article with the same headline in 3 weeks?
That's right. The intention was to prohibit strong drink.
Then you are free to go work in another hospital, or choose another profession.
Let Muslim drivers refuse to transport obviously carried alcohol. The free expression of religion is protected, and the government should not interfere.
However, the cab companies should be able to fire those drivers if their religious views interfere with them performing their jobs. The government should not be able to force employers to allow drivers to perform their jobs as they choose. Doing so interferes with the employers free expression of their own religion, and forces them to financially subsidize the Muslim drivers' religious views.
That is something the government should not be allowed to do.
If the drivers actions offend customers, they can express their displeasure to the company, and refuse to patronize that cab company in the future. The government doesn't need to get involved and should not get involved.
It's the government stepping in and forcing us to accept the behavior of others that is the real problem lurking behind this issue.
Removing the government from an issue as much as possible and the issue becomes much more simple, and can usually simplify the issue greatly and allow the people involved to solve it on their own.
See how this works for Muslim taxidrivers : large signs on both sides of the doors:
WE RESERVE THE RIGHT
TO REFUSE SERVICE TO INFIDELS
They would find themselves subject to a boycott by default, with some percentage of their potential clientele deciding to reserve the right ALSO to refuse
service, and PAY MONEY to people who find personal fault with them.Their "business" would go down the tubes.And within this micro-model we can see why capitalism works, what it needs to work and what it is that their RELIGION keeps them from achieving: we find ways to give latitude, tolerance
and acceptance to other people, regardless of how they dress, what they look like, or what their "faith" is----
as long as their BEHAVIOR is not disruptive, life-threatening, and they can PAY/ that is called generally
"the social contract". It is something these 7th century minds don't understand just yet. But they DO understand the one-way street as it is practiced by us, in our kid-gloves treatment of them.
I wish I had read the whole post with the other details first. I am going to bookmark this--this whole issue, tiny as it is in this specific application, is just chock-full of significance for this ongoing problem// My first thought was that the ACLU would jump into the breach with offers of help, like the clowns they are, but now I read that CAIR, predictably, finds in this another opportunity to offer a lecture on how the Muslims have to be accommodated. I am just waiting for the tipping point with this organization, CAIR. It is going to happen sooner or later.
Have you actually seen Muslims spill the first drops of a drink out as a way to bypass that Koranic stricture?
God, that is pathetic.(But OTOH, let's understand the way it might be interpreted as "A GOOD START"!!) And let's not forget that in this country, we have also seen other brilliant minds argue that oral sex is not sex, and dazzle us with the ambiguity of "is". It is all basically the same thing: lying. Lying to oneself, and to whoever will listen. And ALL of it is ultimately bound up with legalisms (some pseudo-) and the accepted interpretation of them.
Easy solution.
Don't get in a taxi with a muslim. This can work both ways.
i wonder how they got here. most planes carry alcohol. maybe Jim Beam can be the new cockpit security measure.
Yes, I have seen this.
But, if you are paying cash to your HMO; you are paying money out of YOUR pocket to drug companies like WalGreens and Wal-Mart who have agreed to provide you perscriptions, and deal with your insurance company. This is why you can not go to just ANY drug store to get your pills, you have a list of approved providers (ie. they take some your money that you pay in premiums). Thus, when a person decides to work for Wal-Mart or Wal-Greens; part of his income is from my premiums. He gets paid, he dispenses perscriptions. As long as my perscription is legal, I don't care what his religous objections may be. He can fill my perscription, or find somewhere else to work. Now, if they want to form their own company; and only provide drugs that meet their religous dictates, that's fine too. Just don't take my money, then demand that I must respect your religous commands. You sacrificed that luxury when you took my cash.
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