Sharia Law??

The Minneapolis/St. Paul airport is facing another challenge. Remember the "flying Imans"? A majority of Taxi Drivers who serve the airport happen to be Muslim. They are refusing to transport passengers who have purchased alcohol or blind passengers with Seeing Eye dogs. This offends their religious beliefs and they demand the right to refuse service to some person because they beleive that alcohol violates their faith and dogs saliva is unclean.

I am not familiar with all the licensing rules for taxis but it seems to me that unless a person is actually imbibing alcohol, puking or falling down drunk they deserve to be picked up and taken to their destination. Rules that might allow Muslim drivers to refuse service to someone carrying closed bottles of alchol would be wrong. The Muslim is not forced to consume alcohol. We have laws that force Christian pharmacists to dispense abortion meds. We have laws that force the Roman Catholic adoption agencies to place children with gay parents. For persons with deep Christian convictions to feel they are having an active role in dispensing pills to abort a fetus or place a child in what they feel is not a desirable environment is far worse than carrying a passenger in posession of alcohol. The Muslim does not have to make it, sell it or consume it. If this is a big problem for the Muslims, perhaps they need to seek other work as have pharmacists and social agencies that stop providing adoption services because they cannot in good conscience violate deeply held religious convictions.

I respect Muslims who uphold their beliefs, but they deserve no more special treatment than those of any other religion. If a job or a work situation offends your sincere beliefs, seek other employment, do not attempt to impose your convictions on people with the legal right to purchase alcohol or travel with a companion animal. Muslims opted to come to America to live. They deserve respect but have no right to insist we accomodate them by changing our laws and regulations.