Gee, Lonesome, try reading the thread before you post. 
Oh, and regarding this:
What makes you think Mr. Sachs (a good, entrepeneurial capitalist) is actually a “liberal”?
You did quote him out of context, you know, as his remark about the end of the WASP era was separate from the discussion of dogs; it was a continuation of his lament that cabbies are being abused (by, presumably, WASPs) for the cabbies’ ethnic background.
It was a rather stupid and mean-minded remark about whites, so I naturally assumed he was a liberal.
Whatever the context, it was a thoughtless, malicious thing to say.
No irony deficiency today.
And if the airport authority tells you to get to the back of the cab line and try again in a few hours, they are within their rights… and they should do precisely that.
We are dealing with the thin edge of the wedge when it comes to Muslims in the west. Remember, they are part of a movement that considers it has a duty to impose itself on us.
Do you remember the Arab tale of the camel who started by getting his nose in the tent, and then just asked to get his ears in, etc. etc.?
I was really joking when I said the cab would be wearing my bottle of wine. I would not actually do violence.
But the idea of sending them to the back of the line if they refuse to pick up the next passenger for any reason is great! The guide dogs of the blind are “unlean”? You cannot abide a bottle of wine in a gift bag? Whatever. Go to the back of the line.
By the way, while the rest of you fall over each other to defend the sacred right of Muslims to leave passengers at airports without cabs because of their religious beliefs, has ANYONE stopped to consider the poor blind person, who is stranded there and cannot even see if there is another cab to be had?
According to the article quoted in the OP, Somalis represent a very large numner of the cabbies at the airport and a very large number of Somali Muslim cabbies are now engaging in the no-booze practice. What happens when the last five cabs at a smaller airport are all driven by devout Muslims and you are a blind person with a guide dog who needs to get home in a hurry? What happens if you are a business person in a hurry to get to an important meeting with a major client, and you have a botle of very expensive wine you are bringing as a gift. Your plane was late, but if you can just get a cab, you may be able to make the meeting. Oh but wait, Mohammed has his religious convictions. Sorry fella, you’re fucked! Five million dollar deal out the window!
They’ve dropped the light experiment.
http://www.startribune.com/462/story/734729.html (registration may be needed)
There is always a loooong line of Taxis at MSP. I have never ever had to wait for one.
There also is a long waiting list and fierce competition to get MSP medallions. I certainly hope the folks over at MAC take denials of service into account when renewing or awarding the medallions.
First of all, there is nothing discriminatory about a person having to forgo certain types of employment because their religious beliefs make them unable to do the work.
If I ran a retail store and I especially needed help Friday evenings and Saturdays until 5 p.m., then I would NOT hire an Orthodox Jew whose religious convictions forbid him or her from working from Friday at sundown to Saturday at sundown, which is the Jewish sbbath. On the other hand, I would probably be happy to hire him/her as a bookkeeper for my business, or as my lawyer.
If you are a Muslim, don’t apply for a job as a cocktail waiter or waitress! If you are a Muslim doctor who refuses to treat women, don’t come to my country and try to practice medicine, because you are violting the human rights legislation.
Nobody is forcing Muslims to drink or carry alcohol in their private vehicles. But when you get a taxi licence, it is to serve the public. In most large cities, there is a waiting list of people waitng for taxi licences. Why should people who are ready to serve anyone be denied a licence while Muslims are free to decide not to carry dogs, people with bottles of wine, etc. And what happns if one of hem starts to refuse “immodestly” dressed women? Or male-femalecouples who are not married? Where does it stop?
Imagine a family who have spent thousands on plane fare to travel during the holidays. They call a cab and it takes 40 minutes to get there, because of bad winter driving conditions. No matter, they can still make their flight. But wait! The cabbie is a Muslim, and he notices that a couple of the packages they are carrying have bottles of scotch they are bringing as Christmas gifts. Sorry folks, you are fucked and you have just missed your flight. Either that or throw the botles in the snowbank. Allah is mighty!
Taxi licences are a licence to serve the public, NOT to fuck them up with your religious taboos!
Regarding the refusal of Muslim cabbies to take guide dogs for the blind in their cabs, as far as I know, it is illegal in most western countries to refuse service to a blind person who uses a guide dog. So right off, these cabbies are violating the law, and should have their licences revoked.
But for airports in general, I have a simple solution. Arrangements vary a good deal from one country to the next, but most people agree that airports, whether government-owned or private, have a responsibility to ensure fair, prompt and equal service to all their clients.
In many cases, the monopoly of airport pick-up (not drop-off) is SOLD to one taxi company, because it is usually a very lucrative run. You can phone another taxi to come and get you, but only one company has the right to form a pick-up line, which is controlled by an “overseer” of some kind, who ensures that the fares are assigned quickly an fairly on a next-available basis. Other airports may use a badge system.
No matter WHAT the legal arrangement, the airport authority has every right to demand that the cabs that line up ON THEIR PROPERTY to pick up people give prompt, efficient and equal service. As a member of the travelling public, I have a right to demand that. And the Authority has every right to impose certain conditions on the cabs that line up on their property.
So the condition is simply that all cabbies will pick up the next traveller, first-come-first-served. Whether the system uses badges or sells the monopoly to one cab company, there would be a legal undertaking by the individual cabbie or company that they cannot refuse a customer for any reason, with perhaps a few exceptios such as imminent danger (the fare is drunk and is brandishing a knife, for example). The right to refuse dangerous work is well established as a principle in many work contracts and many forms of labour legislation.
Other than that, you supply services to all travellers or you don’t get authorization to line up at the airport. You can still come to the airport to pick up someone if you are called, and you can still drop people off if they have called you to their homes.
The same principle could apply to getting a taxi licence period. You should not be able to refuse a fare because of what they are carrying, unless the substance or product poses an obvious danger (like gasoline in a styrofoam cup, say). There could also be weight limits, such as the right to refuse to take a sofa. You are a cabbie, not a furnitue mover.
But refusing to tak someone who has a gift bottl;e o wine on their lap? No way! If you don’t like it, go back to your own Muslim paradise that you left, dude.
I guess the special lights on the cabs are a no go.
What I don’t like is people, any people, forcing there religion down others throats.
I understand that there is a rule in Islam that makes it a sin to transport alcohol for money. What I think must be conveyed to these cabbies is that they are not transporting alcohol, the fare is.
And I will agree with the slippery slope of this. And I feel it is quite one sided. A veil could conceal if the fare is a man or a woman. And give anyone a good way to hide their identity. Wouldn’t have to be a Muslim. Could be Jessie James for all the cabbie knows.
Should an atheist cabbie be allowed to refuse a fare that won’t show their face?
The other side of this is that it seems that any fundamentalist can impose their ‘rights’ on others, while someone that is just trying to be safe, is out of luck. It seems that this includes those that are disabled and need a guide dog where safety for the cabbie is not a problem. Safety for the fare is not considered.
If you can not come to terms with your religious beliefs that your job may ask you to overcome some superstitions to do you job, and help those that need you, then you may need to look for another job.
What is most concerning to me, is that those that pull up a superstition can ignore common sense and get the government to protect their jobs. We must move away from that, not embrace it.
While I think we’re probably better off negotiating some kind of compromise between religious freedom and universal service, as the Minneapolis airport is trying to do, I can also sympathize with this sort of more rigidly secularist view that says we shouldn’t let religious beliefs disrupt any legal commercial transactions.
However, if we’re going to be serious about this more rigid secularism, we’ve got a lot of house-cleaning to do in our existing traditions before we can presume to apply secularist criteria with any pretense of consistency.
For example, Minnesota, where all this fuss is going on, is one of the 15 or so US states that still have blue laws, which forbid liquor stores to conduct business on Sundays. Now, these blue laws are nothing more than a survival of Christian anti-alcohol religious principles: no trafficking in Demon Rum allowed on the Lord’s Day, thankyouverymuch. Same goes for the “dry counties” and “dry cities” that still exist all over the US, where all alcohol sales are legally banned at all times.
Wouldn’t it be kind of hypocritical to insist that Muslim cabdrivers can’t deny service based on Muslim anti-alcohol religious principles, while still permitting the existence of blue laws and dry laws that legally require booze retailers to deny service based on Christian anti-alcohol religious principles, even if the retailers aren’t anti-alcohol Christians themselves?
If we really mean it that religious biases shouldn’t be allowed to set the rules for commercial transactions, then I think we in the majority culture need to put our own house in order before we go around complaining about how Muslim cabdrivers are unfairly imposing their religious beliefs on us.
Very good point Kimstu. And that’s why I said we should move away from it instead of embrace it. Making more blue laws doesn’t help.
In Colorado, it is illegal to sell alcohol on Sundays too (except in grocery stores where you can buy 3.2% beer [what’s up with that?]). There was a vote to repeal that law a few years ago, and it did not pass.
Liquor stores lobbied against repealing the law (or at least that’s what I saw in some editorials). Sunday was the only day they had ‘off’. Odd. The thought was, that people had to plan a bit, and not buy their liquor on Sundays. The total amount of sales would not go up much, but they would have to have the staff to handle it. I donno. No one was saying that they HAD to be open on Sundays, but I guess they felt they would need to be to be competitive.
Same goes for car dealerships. Can’t be open on Sundays. Not sure about that one. Though I suppose some people want to be able to ‘shop’ and look in windows without having a car dealer hound them. The competition with car dealers is quite fierce. I suspect they may want a day off as well.
No more blue laws. We have enough. And are having a hard time getting rid of the ones we have. That’s my thought.
Well, I haven’t real all 7 pages of this thread, I will when I get time, so forgive me if my reply is repetitive at this point.
My two cents? Alcohol is prohibited in Islam, absolutely. So I understand what their reasoning is—even if it’s flawed and extreme.
As far as religious freedom? They have every right to refuse to pick up passengers, and their employers have every right to fire them for not doing their jobs. (Much the same as the “no contraceptives” pharmacists). Seems simple enough, no?
Thing is, it’s a big, big, BIG leap from saying that blue laws should be repealed to saying that liquor stores should be required to be open Sundays, even if the owners are devout Christians. I quite agree that laws requiring adherence to religious practices are abhorent, but laws requiring some groups to behave against their own religious dictates where those dictates don’t impose a significant burden on any third parties are equally abhorent. Probably unconstitutional, too. What good is freedom of religion if the state can require you to violate your own religion?
I see the opposite happening here. Why should we make laws based on religious belief? Does everyone get an amendment or codicil? Or is it just folks with religion? How about me? Can I make any decrees? ‘cause if that’s the way it’s gonna work, I have some ideas.
“This is illegal unless you are of such and such religion”.
No one is forcing these guys to be in a (pseudo public service) business that might make them violate their religion.
It would be like a Dept of Ag inspector that refuses to inspect hog farms.
Can a Muslim building or health inspector check out a new bar or liquor store? How far can we take this? (I use Muslims as an example, any fundamentalist of any stripe will do).
And, like I said, as an agnostic/atheist, I have no rights? Could I refuse to carry someone in a burka because I could not see their face? Not likely. But, it makes at least a little sense.
I personally don’t ‘get’ religion, and believe it is the cause of many of the problems in the world. I don’t care if you don’t like the smell of hogs or it’s against your religion. If you take a job, you should be able to do all aspects of it.
If religion is your thing, great. I actually envy you to a degree. But keep it your thing.
In every service industry that I know of, if you refuse to do your job, you don’t automatically get the next customer that you choose to work for. You basically go to the end of the line and start over again. Doesn’t matter if it’s because of your religion, or if the customer lives to far away or whatever. Since it was your choice not to serve the customer, you get to start from scratch.
And that’s the point. No one is requiring anyone to violate their religion. I don’t particularly like killing things. I know it happens, but it just isn’t my bag. I would therefore not take a job in a slaughterhouse and expect that because of my feelings, I could get a law passed that would prevent me from being in the presence of blood.
If anybody disagreed with this solution, I missed it. ‘Carrying alcohol’ is not a protected class. Drivers can legally refuse to pick them up. At which point, that cab can legally be made to go to the back of the line.
enipla As an atheist, your testimony in a court of law carries equal weight with that of a Jew or Christian. You can’t be made to pray in public school. Your tax dollars do not fund religious displays (we’re working on Christmas trees too). You cannot be fired for being an atheist. The First Ammendment covers you too.
A number of folks have said that the cabs should be fitted with appropriate fares (those that do not carry alcohol). But they stay at the head of the line until they get a fare that suits them. That’s where this is going.
Should a cabby be able to refuse service to a person in a fur coat?
Sure. But they go to the back of the line.
Legally go to the back of the line? That’s not what has been suggested here. I doubt there is any law about it. I hope we don’t have to make one.
IMHO. A cab driver that refuses to carry a fare because the fare is carrying a legal substance that is against their religion should not be protected.
Service animals are refused?
The more laws/rules/situations that we make to protect superstitions is just going to place people in different classes.
‘Wearing Fur’ isn’t a protected class either.
That’s what I’ve read quite a few times.
Send them to the back of the line if they won’t take the fare. That seems like reasonable accomadation to me.
Doc, we seem to be talking past each other.
The fact that wearing fur is not a protected class was my point. But someone could claim that it offended them so much that they refuse service to fares that wear fur. This is no different than a religious belief. What about vegan drivers? Shouldn’t they be able to make the same protests against any animal product. Got any leather shoes?
As far as ‘Legally’ go to the back of the line. I was just referring to law. Is there a law that would force this? I don’t think so. And I hope we don’t need one.
Me too.
It seems like it’s being handled, and honestly, the easiest thing to do is just have the next fare that does not have alcohol take the cab and the fare with alcohol take the next cab (provided that it is right there, 10 feet away). But, it seems like things are going backward. When we should be embracing logic and science for our ills, many people are embracing superstition and religion.
That’s not a good sign.
What’s next. That’s what worries me.