Posted on 06/02/2007 3:56:19 PM PDT by milestogo
Muslim taxi drivers refusing customers with alcohol
MINNEAPOLIS: Some Muslim taxi drivers in Minnesota have drawn the ire of airport authorities for refusing to pick up customers carrying alcohol.
The cabbies, many of them Somali, have shut their doors to more than 5,200 customers who landed at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport since 2002.
They’ve also refused a number of customers in the city who want to bring a bottle of wine or liquor home with their groceries.
Most were able to get another taxi, but scores were left standing at the curb or unceremoniously dumped on city streets when the cabbies found out, mid-ride, that there was booze in their baggage.
With nearly 50,000 Somali immigrants, Minnesota is fast becoming a testing ground for such assimilation issues, including flare-ups involving Muslim store cashiers who don’t want to scan pork at the check-out counter.
Steve Wareham, director of Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport, said the influx of Somalis since the 1990s, most of whom are Muslim, has led airport authorities into un-chartered territory. “It’s unique in that we haven’t found a problem like this in any other airport or city in the world,” Wareham said. For years, drivers who refused customers at the airport simply lost their place in line.
The airport started trying to negotiate a better system two years ago as customer complaints kept mounting. About a year ago, a group of local imams issued a fatwa calling alcohol “the mother of all evils” and telling taxi drivers that it was not permissible for cabbies to transport customers with alcohol “because it involves cooperating in sin”.
While some Muslim drivers ignored the fatwa, others became more vigilant. A terminally ill woman and her father complained that about three cabbies turned them down after an imam spotted a box marked California wine amongst their luggage and alerted the drivers.
On May 11, the airport enacted tough penalties for cabbies, who refuse riders. A first offense lands a 30-day suspension of the driver’s licence to operate at the airport. Subsequent offenses bring a two-year revocation. The decision was met with anger and threats of a legal challenge.
“It really has messed up our lives completely,” said Abdinoor Ahmed Dolal, a 32-year-old Kenyan immigrant and spokesman for many Muslim cabbies. “People are furious about this,” Dolal added.
Airport officials say drivers who don’t want to transport alcohol should try another line of work and even held a job fair to help dissatisfied drivers find other jobs.
Nobody knows exactly how many drivers have refused to carry passengers with alcohol, but the number of complains are small. Less than one percent of the airport’s 2,000 daily rides are refused because of alcohol, officials said.
Even that tiny percentage is too much for Jack Lanners, chairman of the Metropolitan Airports Commission. He rejects claims that such accommodations should be made for taxi drivers’ religious beliefs. “It’s not an accommodation issue, it’s a service issue,” Lanners told AFP. “If your job is to take people from one point to another, i.e. in a taxi, then you’d think you’d be qualified,” he added.
So far, nobody has violated the new ordinance, although a few cabbies refused to renew their six-month licences after being asked to sign affidavits saying they would pick up all customers.
“We are not comfortable carrying alcohol but they force us,” said Abdi Barir, a 24-year-old immigrant who operates an airport taxi. “It really bothers me but I don’t want to lose my job,” Barir said. afp
Thanks for the kind words georgiarat.
I'm approaching my third anniversary of leaving the great gulag known as Minneapolis for a small town.
It's sad that the once beautiful Twin Cities have become a bastion of socialism. Pretty to look at, but poison within.
Yes, exactly. Catholics didn’t eat meat on Fridays, but they didn’t fire bomb restaurants that serve it; Jews don’t eat pork, but they’re not down at the supermarket ripping the bacon out of the refrigerator case.
Islam is a cult that is both religious (invokes a god) and secular (absorbs the state and/or performs its functions). Christianity has occasionally gone astray when individuals and institutions in it attempted to assume secular power (think of the Puritans). Judaism was theocratic, but then God revealed the truth to the Jews and those who were humble and of good will accepted it. But an imposition of ritual or cultic practices is not part of either the Jewish or Christian view, and the fact that Muslims should expect non-Muslims to honor their ritual laws tells you a lot about them and their cult.
So when you get to Minneapolis, ask your driver, “Are you Muslim?”
If he says yes, tell him, “F#@k off!”
I recommend that every passenger who gets off a plane in Minneapolis should be given one of those little bottles of booze.
I recommend that every passenger who gets off a plane in Minneapolis should be given one of those little bottles of booze.
And in Minnesota at a turkey processing plant, when the news broke that the WTC had been hit, these ungrateful so and so’s stood up and cheered, and the management announced that any one who said a word to them would be fired.
“This whole “Muslims can’t be near alcohol” routine has been cooked up to assert their importance, power and cultural dominance in that city.”
Talked to an old Army buddy that was a Middle East culture expert and linguist. He said he was on a commercial flight out of Rihyad after a lengthy stay. He was tired of old Baywatch reruns on prime time during his stay and when the flight fasten seat belt sign came off, all the diaper/fan belt headeds reach up and chimed the flight stewards for their cocktails.
I would be willing to bet the number is much higher than that. Closer to a quarter or half million.
I don't know but they are treated like royalty. My daughter took a flight to Minneapolis this weekend. I am worried sick about her.
I can believe it. Wasn’t Mohammed Atta downing vodka at the strip club the evening before 9/11?
Old news.
Those are in Maryland.
:-P
Who let these people into this fine country.
Muslims will not assimilate.
With Muslims it’s either their twisted way or a beheading.
All of em.
Just a general observation here...from a guy who has traveled via 30 airports in my life and over 70 flights...I just don’t recall seeing that many people getting off a flight, running over to grab a beer or shot of whiskey and then asking for a cab to drive them home or to the hotel. Most guys arrive at a airport with their wife or GF to pick them up. Most folks I know who do business trips...get a rental car. Most folks visiting relatives...get the relatives to drive out to pick them up.
So am I missing something here with the Minnesota crowd? Are they such big boozers that they rush out of the plane...take down two or three beers at the expensive pub there...then hand-carry their last beer with them to the cab area? Something about this entire story smells bogus. Either these Minnesota folks have a huge alcohol problem...or someone is causing a huge stir over one cab refusing one drunk rider into his vehicle. Pause and think about this...we all do a shot or a drink usually onboard the airline but the vast majority don’t consume anymore after landing...unless we were the aircrew or pilots.
I think we should all slap Coors Light stickers on our suitcases and head for Minneapolis.
Democracy, Whiskey, Sexy!
Yes, and all these fatherless children are just testing the “white guilt” consencious of American liberalism for that prime opportunity to strike again.
I am sure that there would be a furor and LOTS of screaming of “racism”.
But it is a mirror image; a 180 degree view and I believe allow the “fare” to better discriminate and determine if his trip was going to be a safer ride, free from Islamic driver scrutiny, criticism and intimidation. Refusal, based on the above reasons, to accept the taxi and it's driver could possible shape the staffing of airport taxi enterprises.
From the article:
The cabbies, many of them Somali, have shut their doors to more than 5,200 customers who landed at Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport since 2002.
They’ve also refused a number of customers in the city who want to bring a bottle of wine or liquor home with their groceries.
Most were able to get another taxi, but scores were left standing at the curb or unceremoniously dumped on city streets when the cabbies found out, mid-ride, that there was booze in their baggage.
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