This is an opinion piece that was published by USA Today (republished by Yahoo! News). Fairly interesting. I look at this thing, not merely as an issue with Somalian cab drivers, but also with many others. At the outset it seems like a freedom of choice thing, however, when you start thinking in those lines, may be we will end up with a situation where a white cab driver will refuse to pick up a muslim family, just because they are muslim. Where do we cross the line from just trying to abide by our religious/other beliefs into violating others’ rights. Anyway, read the article, and share your views:
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Have booze, won’t travel](http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070117/cm_usatoday/haveboozewonttravel)
There’s a big difference between being free to practice your religion and trying to impose its strictures on others.
In most places in America, that’s understood and accepted. The cab line at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport isn’t one of them.
In the past five years at the airport, Muslim taxi drivers of Somali descent have refused to transport about 5,400 passengers carrying alcohol, usually purchased at duty-free shops or wineries.
The Muslim American Society of Minnesota says carrying alcohol violates Islamic law. Calling for “tolerance,” it wants the airport to establish a color-coding system to channel passengers with alcohol to cabs willing to carry them.
That’s a problem. About 75% of the airport’s 900 drivers are Somalis and many, though not all, have refused such fares. On Tuesday, the airport commission voted to hold public hearings on a strict policy to suspend drivers who refuse passengers for reasons other than a threat to drivers’ safety.
This is the only logical response at a public facility where workers can’t be permitted to turn away some customers based on individual beliefs.
Accommodating such preferences leads down a dangerous road. Should drivers, based on religious strictures, be able to refuse to take passengers to bars? Or be allowed to cite religious beliefs for refusing to pick up blacks, or Jews, or homosexuals?
New York and other cities have struggled for years to stop the pernicious practice of taxi drivers zipping past minorities and refusing fares to certain neighborhoods.
In a few cases, the Islamic drivers in Minneapolis have even refused to transport disabled people with guide dogs because of other religious strictures about unclean animals. The Minnesota Muslim society condemned such refusals. But airport authorities can’t be in the business of parsing religious beliefs as they strive to serve all members of the public equally.
In some ways the Minneapolis dispute is an aberration: Muslim cabbies haven’t made similar demands elsewhere. But it is emblematic of what can happen when people - and not just Muslims - carry religious beliefs to work and expect systems to turn on their needs.
In recent years, a small number of pharmacists who consider contraception akin to abortion have refused to dispense birth control or “morning after” pills. Pharmacists are entitled to hold that view. But stores aren’t obligated to employ people who won’t follow their policies, who won’t dispense legal products or who chase customers away.
That reality applies to taxi drivers, too.
At the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in Minneapolis, executive director Omar Jamal says the alcohol dispute is creating a backlash even against Muslim drivers willing to carry all passengers.
No doubt. Carrying all passengers to their destinations without discrimination is central requirement of a taxi driver’s job. Drivers who can’t accept that should find another line of work.
