Some sobering lessons from muslim taxi drivers

Townhall ^ | Oct. 17, 2006 | Dennis Prager

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Understandably, those troubled by the contemporary Muslim world point to the amount of gratuitous violence emanating from it and the apparent absence of Muslim anger against it.

In response, Muslim defenders of their faith -- and Western defenders such as Karen Armstrong and John Esposito -- inform us that the terror, suicide and cruelty that emanate from a portion of the Muslim world are all aberrations. We are assured that the average Muslim is as appalled as all other decent people are by Muslims who torture, decapitate and blow up innocent people.

Some recent news items from Britain, Australia and the United States, however, suggest that we can make a more accurate assessment of contemporary Islam by looking beyond Islamic terror and beyond the lack of Muslim opposition to it.

I am referring to news reports not about Muslim terrorists but about the far more mundane group of religious Muslims who happen to be taxi drivers. In Britain and Australia, Muslim taxi drivers refuse to pick up passengers who have a dog with them -- even when the passenger is blind and the dog is a Seeing Eye dog. Nearly all religious Muslims believe that Islam forbids them to come into contact with dogs. Therefore, Muslim taxi drivers will even drive by a blind person standing in the cold, lest they come into contact with the dog.

And in Minneapolis, Minn., Muslim taxi drivers, who make up a significant percentage of taxi drivers in that city, refuse to pick up passengers who have a bottle of wine or other alcoholic beverage with them.

This is significant. We are not talking here about Muslim fanatics or Muslim terrorists, but about decent every day Muslims. And what these practices reveal is something virtually unknown in Judeo-Christian societies -- the imposing of one's religious practices on others.

Now, many of those with a graduate degree in the humanities, and others taught how not to think clearly, will object that religious Christians do exactly this sort of thing when they try to impose their religious views on abortion, for example, on society.

But there is no analogy between a Muslim not allowing a non-Muslim to bring a bottle of wine or a dog into a Muslim-driven taxi and Christians trying to convince a democratic society to outlaw most abortions.

There is no comparing ritual prohibitions with moral prohibitions. Christians argue that taking the life of a human fetus where the mother's life is not endangered is immoral. And so do religious Jews (and Muslims) and many secular individuals -- because the issue of abortion is a moral issue. Contact with dogs, on the other hand, is a ritual issue, not a moral issue. Which is why non-Muslims do not consider it immoral -- unlike the many non-Christians who consider most abortions immoral.

And Christians and others who deem abortions immoral when the mother's health is not threatened have as much right to argue for passing laws banning most such abortions as other citizens do to pass laws banning racial discrimination.

Ah, the skeptic may argue, but what if Muslims deem human contact with a dog (except, according to Muslim jurists, for security purposes, farming and hunting) an immoral act, not just a ritually prohibited act for Muslims?

If indeed such were the Muslim argument, we would have an example of an unbridgeable difference between a Muslim conception of morality and that of non-Muslims.

There is then no analogy between Christians wanting to use the democratic process to ban a practice regarded by hundreds of millions of non-Christians as immoral and the Muslim ban on human contact with dogs, a practice regarded by no non-Muslims as immoral.

The appropriate analogy to Muslim taxi drivers refusing to take passengers accompanied by a dog or carrying a bottle of wine would be religious Jewish taxi drivers refusing to take passengers eating a ham sandwich or Mormon drivers refusing to take passengers drinking alcoholic or caffeinated drinks.

But such Jewish or Mormon examples don't exist (and if they did, religious Jews and Mormons would regard such persons as crackpots). They do not exist because Jews and Mormons do not believe that non-Jews are required to change their behavior owing to Judaism's or Mormonism's distinctive laws. Religious Muslims, on the other hand, do believe that wherever applicable, non-Muslims should change their behavior in the light of Islam's distinctive laws. And that difference is at least as important to Muslim-non-Muslim relations as the vexing issue of violent Muslims.

As for the difference between fundamentalist Muslims and fundamentalist Christians, a Christian mailman in Denver called my radio show to say that despite his profound religious objections to pornography, he could not imagine objecting to delivering even the raunchiest porn to homes that ordered it. First, religious non-Muslims, especially in America, believe that liberty, too, is a religious value; that is why Christians put a quote about liberty from the Torah on the Liberty Bell. And second, they have no doctrine that holds outsiders bound to their religious practices.

And that is why there may be more to be learned about the future of religious Muslims' relations with non-Muslims from Muslim taxi drivers than from Muslim terrorists.

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[BenLurkin]

Amazing that our society tolerates this kind of shenanigans in what is presumably a public accommodation - cabs for fare.

But let predominately private association as the Boy Scouts adhere to a moral standard......

[tdewey10]

What can you say about a religons won't help a blind men because they have seeing-eye dog?

Heck, what can you say about a religon that doesn't like dogs?

Evil comes to mind.

[bboop]

What can you say about a religion that worships violence and head-cutting-off and force in order to spread? Too much like the Vikings.

[steve-b]

Unfortunately for Prager's argument, there are too many examples of past Christian misuse of religion which simply cannot be handwaved away in this manner (e.g. church agitation for prohibition, which is an unbreakable analogy since it concerns the exact same act: possession of alcohol).

[jjm2111]

Any relgion that doesn't like this:

produces this:

[Little Ray]

Well, that does it.
Any religion that doesn't like dogs is NOT fit to survive. Kill 'em all. They won't need any sorting.

Actually, I'm serious. Anybody who, as a group, doesn't like dogs is not fit to exist. Individuals not liking dogs, I can understand and forgive, but dogs have been humanity's allies against a hostile world since there was humanity. Any group that hates 'em is against humanity in general.

[Little Ray]

Vikings liked dogs. They were okay.

[Little Ray]

Sorry. There were plenty o' Christian folks against Prohibition. There just more on the wrong side of the equation. And we solved it without sawing anybody's heads off...

[smalltownslick]

Now, many of those with a graduate degree in the humanities, and others taught how not to think clearly


HILARIOUS!!!!!

[jjm2111]

I missed the "not" on the first read. Funny.

[bboop]

Vikings liked dogs? I didn't know. My point was just that the Muzzies today, cutting off heads and spreading terrorism, are much like the Viking attacks on Britain, which likewise spread terror. Pagans.

PS -- I love my genetic (Berzerker) code, don't get me wrong.

The dog part -- good to know.

[Little Ray]

IIRC, they found the body of a dog at the foot of a chieftain in one or more ship burials...

[Dutchgirl]

bttt

[sine_nomine]

We already have Leftist Sharia - prohiting legal behavior, like smoking. Why not Muslim Sharia as well?

The RINOs have caved to Leftist Sharia already.