SEPTA isn’t popular with a lot of Penn students–the stench, the grime, the possibility of being victimized while waiting in a shady, underground station. The obvious alternative: take a cab. But that might not be so easy if you’re toting your drink of choice on the way to a BYO.
An article from CNN yesterday detailed cab drivers in Minneapolis who simply refuse to carry passengers with alcohol — and some drivers won’t even take passengers to bars. The reason: it’s against their religion. The conflict is heated at Minneapolis — St. Paul International Airport, where nearly 75% of the cabbies are Muslim and over 5000 passengers have been refused the ride in the past five years. The Muslim American Society told CNN that “it is expressly stated [that] transportation of alcohol for Muslims is against the Islamic faith, and therefore forbidden.”
A proposed compromise would have placed specific lights on the cabs that refused to transport alcohol–alerting the staff directing passengers that a cab was alcohol-free, so that they could send passengers to cabbies that wouldn’t mind the alcohol.
Apparently, that solution was unacceptable. It was seen as “condoning discrimination against people who had alcohol.” But since when was possessing alcohol a right more fundamental than the free exercise of religion?
Think of it this way: we, as Americans, are presumably guaranteed the free exercise of religion from birth. The constraints on this freedom come from nuanced interpretations of the Constitution and subsequent case law. But the right to possess alcohol? Non-existent prior to age 21. There are US citizens abroad dodging bullets, watching their friends being ripped apart by explosives. And many of these soldiers are under the legal drinking age in the United States. When they return home, happy to be alive and proud to have served their country, they can’t even have a beer at a bar in celebration. Obviously we don’t value the right to possess alcohol as much as the free exercise of religion.
Even more, these cabbies are losing money. I think it’s a safe assumption that driving a cab isn’t a relatively lucrative job — losing clients definitely hurts. But when faced with the decision to either sin against God or lose money, these cabbies appear to believe piety conquers profit.
So should we expect to encounter Philly cabbies who won’t take us (and our bottles of Patron) to the local Mexican BYO? Who knows. It hasn’t happened to me yet — but if it did, I hope I’d be able to suck up the inconvenience with the understanding that I’m respecting another human being’s most fundamental beliefs. I think that’s worth waiting in the cold for a few more minutes — especially if I have the Patron to help me out.
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January 27th, 2007 at 6:29 pm
Are you kidding me?!? Driving a taxi is a job, one that has certain requirements, and if the driver is unable to meet those requirements then he must choose another occupation. Would Mr. Stanfield support the “right” of emergency medical personnel to refuse to transport an inebriated patient in an ambulance? NO, because IT’S THEIR JOB. What about the right of the cab company’s owner to run his business as he sees fit? If he owns the cabs, it’s not “discrimination” to refuse to hire drivers who can’t meet the basic requirements of the job. The right to free exercise of religion does not extend to a minority group imposing it’s own beliefs on the majority–they are free to worship as they please, but society need not accommodate their differences in the execution of a public function. Yes, it is the right of the Muslim drivers to refuse to transport customers with alcohol. It is also the right of the company to fire them. The issue is one of available labor–were there a surplus of non-Muslim recent immigrants vying for jobs driving taxis, these guys would have been fired ages ago. I can only hope that should such insanity spread to the east coast the public will have the common sense to object rather than “tolerate” this nonsense.
January 28th, 2007 at 6:17 pm
There is a pretty basic ground rule with licensed cabs all across the country: you can’t discriminate against certain people when picking up passengers (that is, unless your passengers are rowdy, drunk, etc.) In fact, this is more than a custom: it’s a law in many cities. A law that was created because cabbies were frequently not picking-up African Americans.
The cab drivers are granted a monopoly by the government; they need to comply with all non-discrimination laws. I won’t even get into the reporters who have found evidence that the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood has encouraged the cabbies to start refusing people on these grounds.
January 29th, 2007 at 12:32 pm
Why in the world do devout Muslims immigrate to the U.S.? That’s like a Texan moving to France.