The prophet says I cannot take you to White Bear Lake

November 4, 2006

Guest Post by Morbo

A few months ago, I wrote a smart-alecky post about pharmacists who refuse to fill birth-control prescriptions because of their religious beliefs. I asserted that we should support them and then find similarly bogus reasons for refusing to do our jobs while still getting paid.

I should have realized that in modern-day America, situations like this rapidly move beyond parody. Perhaps taking their cue from those pharmacists, some Somali cab drivers in Minneapolis are now refusing to accept passengers who are carrying bottles of liquor.

These cab drivers, many of whom work at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, are Muslims, and they say carting around someone with a bottle of hootch offends their religious beliefs. Reported the Washington Post:

Over the past few years, a growing number of Somali taxi drivers in the Twin Cities have been interpreting Koranic prohibitions on carrying alcohol to include ferrying passengers with alcohol in their bags.

The story quoted Idris Mohamed, an adjunct professor of strategic management at Metropolitan State University in St. Paul, who said, “If you are a cabdriver and a practicing Muslim, you can’t carry alcohol. It would be the same for a practicing Christian trying to honor their beliefs.”

What an absurd argument.

If a passenger tried to force a cab driver to take a drink of alcohol, that would be an offense to the driver’s religious beliefs. Merely expecting the driver to do his job — take you where you want to go accompanied by your bottle of whatever — can in no way be seen as a violation of the driver’s free exercise of religion. Let the passenger slurp down his Captain Morgan’s Spiced Rum once home and eventually go to hell. That’s no skin off the driver’s nose.

For a while, officials at the airport considered using a system of colored lights to indicate which cabs would accept passengers with liquor. Patrons rebelled, and the ridiculous idea was dropped.

Where will this all end? Devout Muslims believe women should dress modestly and do not consume pork. Are they going to start refusing rides to women in mini-skirts? Will they close their doors to anyone carting a takeout bag from Ray’s Pork BBQ Hut?

Or will they take things to their logical extreme and stop letting non-Muslims in the cab at all? Why give a ride to these hell-bound infidels in the first place?

What about other religions? Will devout Roman Catholic cab drivers refuse to take passengers to their appointments with divorce attorneys? Will a fundamentalist Christian driver refuse to take a college student to biology class?

This has to be stopped now. If you are a taxi driver, your job is to take people wherever they want to go. What they are carrying should be of no concern to you — unless it is six pounds of cocaine, a severed head or a low-yield nuclear device. (Likewise, if you are a pharmacist, your job is to fill prescriptions. Don’t want to fill prescriptions? Get another job.)

I have a solution to the Twin Cities cab dilemma. I’m not going to call it a compromise because it’s not: Just as taxi drivers cannot refuse service to someone based on his or her race, sex, appearance or age, they should not be allowed to deny service simply because the passenger is in possession of a legal substance. Drivers who violate this standard should be fined or fired.

Drivers who violate this standard should be fined or fired.
Or just have their license revoked, as should pharmacists.

  • This could be played to the opposite extreme, of course….

    Taxi drivers have to be licensed. Who funds the licensing bureaus? the taxpayer. Let the taxpayers refuse to fund this idiocy—and Minneapolis will put a stop to it, right quick.

    Who licenses the pharmicists? The State. And, who funds the licensing program? Again—the taxpayer. Let the taxpayers refuse to fund this idiocy—and the state will put a stop to it.

    Granted, there is neither a “right” guaranteeing someone open access to a taxi-ride, nor is there a “right” guaranteeing unfettered access to “Plan B”—but there is, likewise, no “right” belonging either to the taxi-driver, or the pharmacist, guaranteeing that their prerequisite licensure be provided through a department funded by the taxpayers.

    Another option, specifically aimed at the Minneapolis problem, would be to target one cab company that employs drivers who refuse passage to those who do not prescribe to Sharia-based doctrines—and boycott the living daylights out of that one company. Let their cabs sit idle—not only at the airport, but all over the greater Minneapolis/St. Paul region. I’m thinking that it wouldn’t take long for the management of that one company to get the idea that their drivers cannot force their unique religious prohibitions on passengers.

    Such a concept could, if people were willing to make the effort, be employed against the problematic pharmicist as well. Why—given the outcry against pharmicists who discriminate—isn’t there a database of pharmacies that employ “prohibitious druggists?” Take one town—just one, for beginners—and establish a list of pharmacists who force their religious ideologies down the throats of their customers—and the pharmacies that employ them. Boycott these pharmacies.

    Or, build a list of those pharmacists who do not discriminate, and the pharmacies that employ these people. Take your business to that establishment, and ask for that individual by name….

  • There was a letter to the editor in the Economist magazine recently about the wearing of the veil issue in Britain which applies to this controversy also – when Westerners are in Muslim countries, they are expected and required to follow local Muslim customs – no alcohol, women are covered up and not allowed to drive, not allowed to practice their religions openly, etc., etc. And Westerners generally follow this – it’s the “when in Rome…” mentality and it makes for gracious relations between peoples of different cultures. So it’s only right that when those people come over here, they either abide by our traditions of openness and tolerance of others – or if they are unable to, to not put themselves into the position where their alien views and practices come into conflict with Western culture. If they can’t follow Western practice in how to be cabdrivers then they shouldn’t be cabdrivers. Or even the dreaded – “if they don’t like it here they should go back where they came from”

  • So no alcohol, no women without head cover, no crucifixes around necks or stars of david allowed in these cabs…..

  • Carpetbagger- you forgot the obligatory marriage-confirmation checks on pregnant passengers… And the virginity check for unwed girls out with boyfriends for the night…

    The only nice thing about extremism is that it helps to bring about change. So long as the debate is about relatively harmless points which don’t affect the majority of people, then people don’t care enough to change it. (Look at the master of this, Hitler, who moved very carefully and slowly to enact his horrific agenda. Had he come out in 1933, immediately upon reaching power, and instituted the Concentration Camps, the German people would certainly have risen up against that. So, he carefully nurtured his movement, one slow step at a time).

  • are the drivers doing some kind of tsa-baggage check before people get into their cabs. i’ve flown thru msp fairly frequently, and as far as i remember, there are no package stores between the gates and the cab pick-up area. so unless people are carrying bottles of booze off the planes with them, there really shouldn’t be any visible alcohol around.

  • What if the passenger chugs down the beer right before he gets in the cab? He’s not carrying alcohol, but he’s “carrying” alcohol — fare or no fare?

    How many angels can fit in the backseat of a cab, anyway?

  • Okay, I hate to do it but we’re going to have to bring back the You–ams. Just as Imams in some Muslim countries go around hassling non-compliant women and beardless men, the You-ams will be non-believers who roam our streets and when finding someone doing something really stupid because fof their religions the You-ams don those big foam hands and bitch-slap them to their senses. Non-dispensing pharmacists? Whap Whap Whap. Non-takiiing taxi drivers? Whap Whap Whap. Being Jerry Falwall? Whap Whap Whap.

  • Had he come out in 1933, immediately upon reaching power, and instituted the Concentration Camps

    Actually, Castor, the Nazis did set up the Concentration Camps right away. Hitler came to power on Jan 30, Dachau, which Wikipedia describes as “not the first Nazi prisoner camp” opened less than 2 months later in March 1933.

    Bush at least waited 9 or 10 months.

  • But it’s not an absurd argument. It’s just that’s not how we do religion any more. Several hundred years ago, it was assumed that an entire country had to be a single religion, chosen by the king. Any who remained outside of those parameters were scorned and treated badly.

    Yet in some ways that was a more logical approach to religion than the current one.

    Because religions tend to be about moral superiority — about the people with the “right” religion being better than those with the “wrong” one. When people refuse to join the “right” religion — just as when people refuse to give up a bad habit like shoplifting — they are shunned, imprisoned, and treated badly. They are morally inferior.

    So to treat people of other religions as if they are truly your equals and to act as if it is morally acceptable to limit your own moral life only to your leisure hours….. well, it’s not very logical, is it?

    Which is one of the reasons I’m an atheist…..

  • As a Minnepolis resident I have had this happen to me and several of my friends.

    It only happens at the airport, oddly enough. If a cab picks you up downtown or uptown and you are have been out, the Somali cab drivers have zero problems carrying you home…the long way.

    I’m not sure what the difference is between carrying a bottle of liquor or carrying the liquor inside you.

  • DeepDarkDiamond- True, and a poorly-worded response on my part. Yes, the camps were open, but they weren’t directly death camps as they became at later times. For the most part, there was a progression from harassment, to segregation, to encampment, and finally annihilation. I certainly didn’t mean to denigrate the presence of the camps, but rather highlight the public transition of small steps, so that they were more palatable to the population.

  • Hmmm, even if these cabbies argued this position, I’d want to ask them if they felt that a bus driver was obligated to follow the same rule. In England, at least, it is a running joke that the entire bus fleet is driven by Pakistanis, and I wonder how long they would last if they tried to enforce the rule.

    And the strictest Muslims forbid a woman — I believe above the age of seven, but I’m not sure — from traveling with any ‘non-Mahram’ male, in other words, any male but a relative who would be unmarriable, or her husband if she has one. I wonder if the cabbies would want to enforce that one.

  • Does this actually happen? How do the cabbies know that someone is “carrying” anyway? If I were a cab driver and someone carrying an unwrapped, presumably open container of alcohol tried to hail me, I might drive by, too. Or is MN really as weird as Garrison Keilor portrays it?

  • MN is that weird. There’s a weirdly passive-aggressive, avoidant mindset there in which it’s considered worse to, for instance, ask someone to stop talking in a movie theatre than it is to talk in a movie theatre. That’s almost certainly a factor in this situation: Complaining about it or criticizing it or taking action (such as a boycott or asking the appropriate licensing organization to take action) would be seen as unspeakably rude to a non-insignificant percentage of Minnesotans.

  • Should we be surprised? Should we expect poorly educated individuals from cultural Theocracies to understand or fully adapt to our “tolerant” ways — especially when this country is immersed in an attempt by radical-right Christians to impose their religion upon nonbelivers? Maybe if we had fewer phamacists refusing to fill perscriptions we’d have fewer taxi drivers refusing to accept fares.

  • As one of the earlier newspaper articles mentioned, they only know you’re ‘carrying’ if you’re carrying a bottle out in the open. If it’s inside a bag they never know, and don’t seem to care.

    Not that this excuses anything; I’m fully in agreement: if you don’t like the duties involved in your chosen career, you’re free to go and find another one.

    I’m sure our local Somali community is missing out on a great number of bartending jobs, as well; there’s a significant Somali population right near a bar-hopping street adjacent to the University. Perhaps we should all just stop consuming alcohol so that our Somali neighbors can go anyplace they want and never feel offended?

    Oh, yeah: if you never run into anything that offends you, you don’t live in a free society.

  • With regards to the pharmacy issue, I’d like to offer another perspective. First, let me make it clear that I am pro-choice, and absolutely believe in a woman’s right to use whatever contraceptive means she needs. I would never, in my duties as a pharmacist, refuse to fill a contraceptive prescription. I vehemently disagree with other pharmacists who perform in this fashion and try to force their religious beliefs on other people, especially those women in rural areas who may have few drug-store options.

    That being said, I’d like to remind everyone that if states pass legislation that takes away a pharmacist’s right to refuse to fill a prescription, it also takes away the ability of the pharmacist to refuse a prescription because filling it might lead to harm. NO, I’m not talking about contraception, although I recognize that for the pharmacists in question, this may be part of their concern. I’m talking about refusing to fill a script because the dose is wrong and could kill someone, or the new medication will interfere with another, or it’s for an antibiotic that won’t kill the microorganism suspected in an infection… or because of all of the reasons that I have fought for my patients and called their doctors and said “I won’t fill this script because doing so will harm this patient.”

    Do you see the bind this puts a progressive pharmacist in? I will fight all day long to prevent women from having their contraceptive choices challenged. But I will also fight to keep my professional responsibility to look out for my patient and refuse to fill a prescription if I truly believe it will harm them. In my world, this would NOT include refusing contraception. Unfortunately, in the bigger world of healthcare it does.

    I agree with the suggestion to boycott the pharmacies that refuse to fill contraceptive prescriptions – let’s vote with our money.

  • It’s really time to say to these bozos: “When in Rome, do as the Romans do – asshole.” These medieval halfwits are here from the largess of our national heart. If they don’t get it, they really should go back to massacring each other in that antpile that can’t even make itself a country.

    And don’t worry, it’s not me being anti-Moslem. I’d have the same attitude toward anyone coming here and doing that. The unfortunate thing is, it’s only the Moslems who say “when you’re in our country, you do as we say; when we’re in your country, you do as we say.” That religion really is more screwed up than the screwiest versions of Christianity.

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