Muslim Taxis and Sharia

Heard about this a couple days ago and finally remembered to post. FrontPage magazine article is probably one of the better on the topic.

When flight attendant Eva Buzek returned to Minneapolis from a trip to France, five taxi drivers refused to take her home from the airport. The reason? She had two bottles of wine in her suitcase -- and the drivers were Muslims, who don't drink and refuse to have alcohol in their taxis.

About three-quarters of the 900 taxi drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are Somalis, many of them Muslim. And about three times each day, would-be customers are refused taxi service when a driver sees they're carrying alcohol.

"It's become a significant customer-service issue," said Patrick Hogan, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Airports Commission, on Thursday.

Now the airports commission has a solution: color-coding the lights on the taxi roofs to indicate whether a driver will accept a booze-toting fare. The actual colors haven't been decided on yet, but commission officials met Thursday with representatives of the taxi drivers and the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society to continue working on the plan.

I like the idea of color coding the taxi lights, that way I know what taxis to avoid at all times. Being a service industry, I'm thinking that either they find another job, because I personally won't ride in a taxi that makes prerequisites on my travel. No, I don't have a "right" to take their cab when carrying alcohol, but then again I do have a right not to take a taxi that doesn't allow it.

If more people followed this line of thought, the boycott would let economic powers decide.

UPDATE: Apparently I am too far behind the news.