Tuesday, May 29, 2007
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MINNEAPOLIS, MN (AFP) - Some Muslim taxi drivers in Minnesota have drawn the ire of airport authorities for refusing to pick up customers carrying alcohol. The cabbies, many of them Somali, have shut their doors to more than 5,200 customers who landed at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport since 2002.
They have also refused a number of customers in the city who want to bring a bottle of wine or liquor home with their groceries.
Most were able to get another taxi, but scores were left standing at the curb or unceremoniously dumped on city streets when the cabbies found out, mid-ride, that there was booze in their baggage.
With nearly 50,000 Somali immigrants, Minnesota is fast becoming a testing ground for such assimilation issues, including flare-ups involving Muslim store cashiers who do not want to scan pork at the check-out counter.
The large percentage of taxi drivers who are Somali has made the industry a lightning rod for cultural differences.
Steve Wareham, director of Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport, said that the influx of Somalis since the 1990s, most of whom are Muslim, has led to uncharted territory for airport authorities.
"It's unique in that we haven't found a problem like this in any other airport or city in the world," Wareham said.
For years, drivers who refused customers at the airport simply lost their place in line.
The airport started trying to negotiate a better system two years ago as customer complaints kept mounting.
About a year ago, a group of local imams issued an official "fatwa" calling alcohol "the mother of all evils" and telling taxi drivers that it was not permissible for cabbies to transport customers with alcohol "because it involves cooperating in sin."
While some Muslim drivers ignored the fatwa, others became more vigilant. A terminally ill woman and her father complained that about three cabbies turned them down after an imam spotted a box marked California wine among their luggage and alerted the drivers.
On May 11, the airport enacted tough penalties for cabbies who refuse riders.
A first offense lands a 30-day suspension of the driver's license to operate at the airport. Subsequent offenses bring a two-year revocation.
The decision was met with anger and threats of a legal challenge.
"It really has messed up our lives completely," said Abdinoor Ahmed Dolal, a 32-year-old Kenyan immigrant and spokesman for many Muslim cabbies. "People are furious about this."
Airport officials say that drivers who do not want to transport alcohol should try another line of work and even held a job fair to help dissatisfied drivers find other jobs.
Taxi drivers say that the airport is overreacting and that the media has overblown a tiny problem.
Nobody knows exactly how many drivers have refused to carry passengers with alcohol, but the numbers of complaints are small. Less than 1 percent of the airport's 2,000 daily rides are refused because of alcohol, officials said.
Even that tiny percentage is too much for Jack Lanners, chairman of the Metropolitan Airports Commission. He rejects claims that such accommodations should be made for taxi drivers' religious beliefs.
"It's not an accommodation issue, it's a service issue," Lanners said. "If your job is to take people from one point to another, i.e. in a taxi, then you'd think you'd be qualified."
So far, nobody has violated the new ordinance, although a few cabbies refused to renew their six-month licenses after being asked to sign affidavits saying that they would pick up all customers.
"We are not comfortable carrying alcohol, but they force us," said Abdi Barir, a 24-year-old immigrant who operates an airport taxi.
"It really bothers me, but I don't want to lose my job."
Source: AFP, May 29, 2007