Saturday, January 27

Muslim Cabbies Create Controversy

Over the last five years, Muslim cab drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul airport have been refusing passengers with alcohol or pets. According to them, it is against Islamic law to transport alcohol. The reason for not transporting pets, the saliva of dogs is seen as unclean. Officials are now considering suspending the cab drivers who refuse to transport people or animals.

"There are times where cab after cab will refuse service, and passengers can be waiting for 20 minutes," says Patrick Hogan, spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission. "We've had complaints of people being asked if they had any alcoholic beverages in their luggage."
While these incidents are occurring less, it sill happening on an average of 14 times a month. While the cabbies want to make this a religious issue, the ACLU says;
"This is a public access issue," says Chuck Samuelson, of the American Civil Liberties Union of Minnesota, "Bottom line is we are a secular society, and that's the way it is."
Surprisingly, and it's probably wrong to state it like that, but surprisingly Hassan Mouhamud, Imam of the AlTaqwa Mosque in St. Paul, and a scholar of Islamic Law says there is a way to work this out.
He says under the Hanafi School of Islamic law, if Muslims live in a country that does not enforce their religious law, they can defer to the written laws of that country.
I can't help but bring up this point, but if these cabbies adhere to a strict interpretation of Islamic law, then wouldn't transporting an infidel(non-Muslim) supersede the alcohol and dogs? This is sort of the Christian version of being against abortion, but for the death penalty and apocalyptic wars.