Muslim Cabbies and Christian Pharmacists
By now just about everyone in the known world has heard about the late-2006 fracas at the Minneapolis-St. Paul airport. A bunch of Muslim cab drivers (Somali immigrants, mostly, comprising about 75% of the airport's cab fleet) have been refusing to serve travelers carrying alcohol. There have even been a few incidents of blind people with seeing-eye dogs being refused service on grounds of a Qu'ranic prohibition against dogs and their unclean saliva. As I read it, the airports authority first accommodated these cabbies' preferences by considering a booze-or-no-booze cab-painting scheme, but regrouped after the predictable public outrage.
The dust has more or less settled, and the airport authority is now thinking about punishing these proponents of Shariah law by sending them to the back of the queue the first time they refuse service, and banning them from the airport altogether if they do it again. As an American and a Christian, I have held that this solution or one like it should have happened the very first time such a denial of service was reported. This is America; we are not an Islamic land, thank you very much, and Shariah norms have no place here. If you don't want infidels in your cab, you are free in this land of opportunity and religious pluralism to find some other line of work.
With me so far? Yep, I was afraid of that. Now think back to earlier in 2006 when some Christian pharmacists in Illinois were running into legal trouble for refusing, on grounds of conscience, to dispense the "morning after contraceptive" RU-486. A clear case of the religious scruples of a minority being forceably conformed to the preferences of others, right? And besides, it's not like the same abortifacent can't be had from some other pharmacist, right?
Well, I made the mistake of reading a column over at Little Green Footballs (a few days ago! Now I can't find the post and link! sorry) that connects the two and has me squirming. He argues that both the Muslim cabbies and the Christian pharmacists are in effect demanding that their employers and their customers go to unreasonable lengths to accommodate their religious scruples and are therefore egregiously wrong. I hate his conclusion, but cannot refute his logic. Drinking alcohol, using a seeing-eye dog, and having an abortion are all legal behaviors in this country. A citizen may not approve of one or two or all three, but he is not allowed to prevent others from engaging in them. He can work for change by how he votes, by running for office, by lobbying, by protesting, by boycotting, by persuading, and by praying, but he's not allowed to place himself in the way of others who wish to practice them.
Food for thought. Is there a principle I'm missing, one that invalidates the columnist's connection?
posted by Aaron @ 7:00 PM
9 Comments
9 Comments:
Nope. The connection is valid.
I for one was not among the outraged over the Muslims. If one is truly convicted that something is sinful, now can one continue to do it and remain a moral person?
Remember our father's crisis of conscience over helping to build war machines when we were kids? He was willing to leave Univac if that's what it took, to stop contributing to what was against his conscience. As it happened, they did not want to lose him and moved him to another division, but he was willing to do that for what he believed.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,259914,00.html
Rereading my original comment, I have a new perspective as of a week or so ago. One of my eldest's teachers has a history of emotional problems AND is a rather rabid Evangelical. She apparently believes it is her mission to ferret out all the high schoolers with eating disorders and get them help. Unfortunately, with her personal background, she sees an eating disorder in any child with a high metabolism and active life, which is MOST of them. She is hounding my daughter to get help for her "anorexia." And not just my daughter, most of the girls in her class.
Now here we have someone acting on her conviction as a Christian that she is doing what God wants her to do, what He has placed her at this school to accomplish. And yet she is obviously wrong. I am in a muddle at the moment. The administration is dealing with it but I am not sure how effectively.
NIM: I'm not seeing the connection between the teacher with an ongoing ministry to anorexics and the cabbies/pharmacist preference issue. Can you flesh it out for me?
My point is, in each instance you have someone who firmly believes s/he is carrying out God's will, God's mission. How do you argue with that?
And I hope you were being tongue-in-cheek with the "ministry to anorexics" thing.
Well, of course the standard for discovering God's will is every word that proceeds out of His mouth, i.e., the Word of God. Nothing else, including even the strong inclination of the most mature believer, is truly reliable.
One of the really dangerous aspects of the modern evangelical claim of God's "leading" for one's pet project, point of doctrine, or choice of spouse, is that it puts what I want to do out of reach of criticism: after all, if the Holy Spirit told me to do it, who are you to challenge? Sadly, too many are afraid to stand up to a "But God told me..." with biblically-based counsel.
And yes, I was joking about her, um, ministry.
Well, although I'm not outraged at the cabbies, I'd like to present an analagous situation. Suppose a Muslim woman wants to be a lifeguard at a swimming pool, but believes that she must always be wearing loose-fitting clothes. Wearing those clothes would clearly make it difficult, if not impossible, for her to do her job (can't you just see the speed with which her ballooning clothes would allow her to move? :D); wearing anything else is a breach of religious law. Should she be allowed to be a lifesaver? Should an Amish man be given job in the fire department, given that he won't be willing to drive a fire truck?
I guess my point is that while the Muslim cabbies are understandably reluctant to carry alcohol, they need to think about the requirements of their job before they take it on.
Incidentally, there's nothing in the Quran about dogs and/or their saliva, although there are supposed to be several Hadith (sayings of the Prophet Muhammad pbuh)on the subject. The difference between the two being that the former is held to be the Word of God by all believing Muslims, while the latter were collected a century and a half after the Prophet's (pbuh) death, and are therefore subject to debate about authenticity.
(By the way, I'm a friend of NIM's, and found your blog from hers.)
Pakameristanican: thanks for paying me a visit, and I hope you'll stop by again sometime and forgive me for this very tardy reply to your comment.
One concern I have in this discussion of Shariah (thank you for your clarification of Hadith v. Quran, btw) is that if cab drivers or pharmacists or lifeguards wish to practice their respective faiths according to the conscience of each, I do believe that employers ought to make reasonable accommodations.
However, the fear of many citizens of Minnesota, I believe, is that this collective action by these cab drivers constitutes an attempt to establish Shariah as a community norm in America.
America is not an Islamic land, and many here view actions like these as opening salvoes towards turning it into one.
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