In an article today, "Don't Bring That Booze into My Taxi," I take up the issue of hacks at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (MSP) and their unwillingness to transport passengers who visibly carry alcohol. Here are some additional points of interest that could not fit the column.
According to one commentator on my website, Wiley Freeman, the two-light solution is already dead, due to taxi industry disapproval. He writes: "It appears the taxi companies feared that taxi customers would boycott the Muslim taxis, identifiable by their lights. They also feared that customers would use other means of transportation."
Neither I nor anyone I queried has ever heard of cabbies in a Muslim-majority city raising an objection to carrying a passenger with liquor. Even Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American Islamic Relations acknowledged that the cab drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International are the first he's heard objecting to carrying alcohol.
There are reasons to doubt that the drivers' understanding of the Koranic prohibition on alcohol makes sense. The ban on alcohol concerns its consumption, not its transportation. Mohammad Al-Hanooti, a specialist on Islamic law, states that "some Islamic scholars disagree altogether with the Minneapolis Muslim cabbies' interpretation of Islamic law." Al-Hanooti himself explicitly finds that "it is lawful for a Muslim driver to carry a passenger who has alcohol." He dismissed the cabbies' concerns: "They think it is unlawful because they carry this feeling from home, because they come from Muslim countries."
Ironically, Muslim drivers do not object to drunken passengers, just those who are evidently carrying alcohol in bottles.
I raised the prospect of Muslim drivers objecting to – and refusing to transport "women with exposed arms or hair, homosexuals, and unmarried couples." I could have mentioned transgendered individuals, but did not. Today, I learn that this issue has already arisen, not at MSP but in the city of Minneapolis, according to a news report from the local Fox affiliate. (For the article, click here; for the video, here.)
In her bright pink hat, Paula Hare has found herself waiting on her stoop a lot lately, for taxi cabs that never come. Not to avoid confusion, Paula even tells the taxi dispatcher she's transgendered. But on three occasions when the taxi actually showed up, she says Muslim drivers have refused to give her a lift. "This is more than just religion, it's flat out discrimination," Hare said. "And we've got laws against that in this state." The city of Minneapolis says she's right. Of the nearly 2,000 taxis in the Twin Cities metro, estimates are as many as half the drivers are recent immigrants – many Muslim.
The same item reports from MSP: "When FOX 9 stopped by the airport taxi lot to talk about the controversy, we got a near riot. No one said they would give us a ride with a bottle of wine, and they told us to go somewhere else."
Back in 2000, the Council on American-Islamic Relations jumped in to the fray with its usual helpfulness. "There is a large group of Muslims out here," remarked Damon Drake, CAIR's local outreach director. "Now that the Muslims are here, they need to be accommodated." Building on this aggressive attitude, Drake suggested that passengers with alcohol be segregated from everyone else and be handled by "special call" drivers willing to transport alcohol who could jump the line to take them. In proposing this, CAIR not only sought state endorsement for the Muslim prohibition on alcohol but tried to shift the burden of being anomalous and exceptional – not the Muslim driver shunning liquor but the alcohol-consuming passenger.
Passengers reacted with displeasure to the Muslim aggressiveness: "They're really kind of imparting their religious views on the public," said Katie Patterson of McKinley, Texas, who suggested that the cabbies should perhaps "look for other work."
If anything, airline personnel seem to be even less pleased: Eva Buzek, a flight attendant, returned to Minneapolis from a trip to France and encountered five straight taxi drivers who refused to take her home because she was had two bottles of wine in her suitcase. Buzek, an immigrant from Poland, considered this un-American. "I came to this country and I didn't expect anybody to adjust to my needs. I don't want to impose my beliefs on anyone else. That's why I'm in this country, because of the freedom. What's going to be next? ... Do I have to cover my head?"
Non-Muslim taxi drivers at MSP would seem to dislike this situation the most. "To work out here is the choice of the driver," says one of them, Tim Swiler. "We're talking about the choice to run a business. If you choose not to transport alcohol, that's your choice. It's the same choice if you decide not to take someone with a cane or a limp, a toupee or a bad hat. Go to the back of the line."
(October 10, 2006)
Forget about sending them to the back of the line - send them back where they came from. If they're from here tell them to get another job.
The answer is simple, revoke their carriage license. If they want to be a mullah, let them open a mosque, if they want to be a cab driver follow the city rules.
Once in a north African country a local colleague told me the ban on alcohol was in fact just an interpretation, the Koran itself being somewhat vague as such texts often are.
GOOD. I hope the SATANIC cult of Islam Muslims ALL tag themselves for what they are. We NEED to see these clowns in society.
So, for the camel humping taxi drivers.....DO NOT GET IN THEIR cars. DO NOT support ANY business Muslims attempt to provide. Their American dream needs to be axed until they become AMERICANS.
This is similar to the story of the Pharmacist who refused to provide birth control, as she was Catholic. Or the waiter who refused to serve alcohol in the resturant because he was Baptist.
If you accept money to provide a service; you are selling your service - not your values. If you feel uncomfortable doing this, then perhaps a different field is in order. If you work as a waiter, but refuse to work weekends; you either work at a Chic-a-filet or find a resturant that will accomodat your needs. To demand that others change to accomodate YOUR religion is out of line; especially in a service industry. That's my opinion.
I'm on the cabbies side.
What if I were a doctor and based on my religious preferences I don't want to be in the operating room during an abortion?
"What's going to be next?Do i have to cover my head?"Not yet!
I'm wondering if it would be considered ok, if a cab driver refused to drop an obviously pregnant woman off at an abortion clinic?
Let the market decide. If people don't like what the Muslim cab drivers are doing, don't give them your business. I don't think the government should be dictating business policy.
I haven't seen this question answered anywhere:
Are these driver-owned cars or are the taxis owned by a business and the drivers just check out the cars each day?
-PJ
"boycott the Muslim taxis"
damned good idea.
what's to stop the sensible rider from saying "oh, sorry, I've got wine in my bags. I'll have to take another taxi".
Since PC won't allow us to kick the throat-slitters out, we have to fight back in this way.
I wonder if getting in their cab after a night of drinking and throwing up on their backseat counts.
"We could be punished in the afterlife if we agree to [transport alcohol]."
what a warped set of values that considers the carrying of alcohol worse than slowly slicing the head off a person while singing religious ditties!
Perhaps neighborhoods should be allowed to put up "special colored lights" to signal their views that Muslims shouldn't be free to live in that section of town.
Perhaps business should be allowed to put up "special colored lights" to signal that "No Muslims Need Apply.
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?
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.