"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."
George Santayana
Posted on 10/11/2006 4:36:37 AM PDT by Alouette
A minor issue at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has potentially major implications for the future of Islam in the United States.
Some Muslim taxi drivers serving the airport declared, starting about a decade ago, that they would not transport passengers visibly carrying alcohol, for example, in transparent duty-free shopping bags. 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 and morally 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 the airport 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."
To avoid this predicament, Muslim cabbies asked the Metropolitan Airports Commission for permission to refuse passengers carrying liquor, or even suspected of carrying liquor, without their being banished to the end of the line. The airport authority rejected this appeal, worried that drivers might offer religion as an excuse to refuse short-distance passengers.
The number of Muslim drivers has by now increased, to the point that they reportedly make up three-quarters of the airport's 900 cabdrivers. By September 2006, on average, Muslims turned down three fares a day on booze-related grounds. According to airport spokesman Patrick Hogan, this issue has "slowly grown over the years to the point that it's become a significant customer service issue."
"Travelers often feel surprised and insulted," Hogan added.
WITH THIS in mind, MAC proposed a pragmatic solution: drivers unwilling to carry alcohol could get a special color light on their car roofs, signaling their views to taxi starters and customers alike. From the airport's point of view, this scheme offers a sensible and efficient mechanism to resolve
a minor irritant, leaving no passenger insulted and no driver losing business. "Airport authorities are not in the business of interpreting sacred texts or dictating anyone's religious choices," Hogan points out. "Our goal is simply to ensure travelers at (the airport) are well served." Awaiting approval only from the airport's taxi advisory committee, the two-light proposal will likely be in operation by the end of 2006.
But on a societal level, the proposed solution has massive and worrisome implications. Among them: The two-light plan intrudes Shari'a law, with state sanction, into a mundane commercial transaction in Minnesota. A government authority sanctions a signal as to who does or does not follow Islamic law.
What of taxi drivers beyond those at the airport? Other Muslim hacks in Minneapolis-St. Paul and across the country could well demand the same privilege. Bus conductors might follow suit. The whole transport system could be divided between those Islamically observant and those not so.
Why stop with alcohol? Muslim taxi drivers in several countries already balk at allowing seeing-eye dogs in their cars. Future demands could include not transporting women with exposed arms or hair, homosexuals, and unmarried couples. For that matter, they could ban men wearing kippas, as well as Hindus, atheists, bartenders, croupiers, astrologers, bankers, and quarterbacks.
The airport authority has consulted on the taxi issue with the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society, an organization the Chicago Tribune has established is devoted to turning the United States into a country run by Islamic law. The wife of a former head of the organization, for example, has explained that its goal is "to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state."
It is precisely the innocuous nature of the two-light taxi solution that makes it so insidious, and why the Metropolitan Airports Commission should reconsider its wrong-headed decision.
The writer is director of the Middle East Forum. www.DanielPipes.org
It would be great if there were two lines of taxis. The line on the left would be for non-Sharia compliant taxis, which would take anyone anywhere, regardless of what they were carrying, wearing, or doing. The other would be for clearly marked Sharia compliant taxis, which would have a list of restrictions as long as your arm. Let the customers step up and request a taxi from one line or the other.
After watching the non-Sharia compliant cabs whiz by and take 98% of the fares for a few weeks, we would soon see a change in attitude.
If you state that you will wait for the next Taxi you will be put at the back of the line. /S
Isn't this akin to a stripper refusing to take her clothes off because it's against her religion? Or a surgeon refusing to do surgery because he's offended by blood? If a certain job has aspects of it that are in conflict with your religion, DON'T TAKE THE JOB!! How hard is that to understand?
Wait for a Muslim gal to sue Hooters for not allowing her to wear the hijab.
Didn't a transvestite already sue Hooters?
In order to assure that any cab I take will not also be a suicide car bomb, I will openly carry an unopened bottle of Jack Daniels...hell, I might throw a piggy under my other arm just to be safe.
Many USA airports have an exclusive deal with a single "Airport Taxi" company ... anybody (even other taxicab companies) can drop off passengers but ONLY the approved Airport Taxi company can pick them up.
Great idea. Imagine if 500 people got off 5 planes and all had a bottle of Black under one arm and Miss Piggy under the other? YooHoo!
Call the Chabad mitzvah-mobile.
The way it works in the New York Metro airports is that all taxis must go to the taxi stand to pick up the next available fare. However, the traveler can arrange with a car service to pick them up at the passenger pick-up area by calling and requesting a car at a specific time. However, the car service cars are not allowed to pick up passengers for which they do not have an arrangement.
There are hundreds of car service outfits in New York who do a nice business doing just that.
This has been stopped.......the Airport Commission said the out-cry against this crap was tremendous.
I suspect they also figured out that if the cabs were identified as mussies people would refuse to ride in them.
.
So can American cabbies refuse service to anybody carrying a Koran?
So there is a legitimate First Amendment separation of church and state issue here.
Your suggestion is the simplest, most rational & ultimately most fair way to approach this, I think.
With TROP leaving our shores for their jihadistans..
like any other business, they can refuse service to any customer they want.
as long as that customer is white or a Christian.
What happens, though, if the already high percentage of cab drivers who're moslem rises-and the moslems who want the lights begin pressuring the moslems who don't? And we all know what "pressure" can mean in islam....I can imagine a long line of cabs with no alcohol lights, and a little bitty short line of cabs without lights. Let's hope the poster in reply 50 is right, and all the discussion about this is moot!
A poster on another thread has confirmed what the poster in reply 50 said : A caller to the Laura Ingraham show stated that MAC got so many angry e mails and calls from all over the country and even the world that they've shelved the whole stupid idea. Now all that remains is to punish any moslem driver who violates Minneapolis and MN bylaws on discrimination, and the ADA (service dogs). See to it they obey the laws and pull their licenses if they don't.
Interesting comment heard on talk radio this morning: Will this ability to exclude taxi customers due to one's religion now extend to Catholic pharmacists who refuse to fill prescriptions for the Morning After pill?
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