Have booze, won't travel

[rodeodance]

best to read all of article to get the jest of it (and similar issues)


http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20070117/cm_usatoday/haveboozewonttravel

Have booze, won't travel

Wed Jan 17, 6:55 AM ET

There's a big difference between being free to practice your religion and trying to impose its strictures on others.
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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.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

1. How would they know the people have booze?

Is it common for people coming from an airport to have a bottle of the stuff in their hands? Obviously I'm someone who neither drinks alcohol nor flies, so I have no clue. But it would seem to me that brandishing a fifth of expensive Scotch would be asking for problems, and not just from taxi drivers--people might try and steal it, or it could get broken.

[Warpy]

2. Sorry, but anyone whose religion infringes on the public's right

to purchase a service s/he has been hired to provide needs to find another line of work.

Pharmacists can't be pious enough to refuse to do their jobs providing women with reproductive medications legally prescribed by a physician and these cabbies shouldn't get away with refusing fares.

If you can't do your job, you need to leave it and try something else.

[soothsayer]

3. It's not even a Muslim tenet (to not carry booze); just not supposed

to drink it. This sounds so bogus, but who knows