Minneapolis Dog Fight

It may not be a well-know fact about Muslims that they believe dogs make MUslim men religiously unclean, or at least their saliva, but as every dog owner knows, if you’ve got a dog, you’ve got the saliva. As a result, Muslims aren't crazy about dogs. Here in Dearborn the lack of barking dogs doesn’t make Muslim neighborhoods noticeably quieter, as there are still plenty of tricked out SUVs going up and down with their bass boosters thumping, and lots of tooting horns in the streets by way of saying howdy do.

The recently-discovered initiative by Muslim cabbies at the Minneapolis-St Paul Airport who've been refusing passengers carrying alcohol (also disliked intensely by the Prophet) also includes cabbies saying no to passengers with dogs.

And not just little foo-foos in leopard-skin purses, but service dogs, the kind that blind folks and some other disabled people depend on to get around.

The problem with refusing to let Leader Dogs ride is that refusing to reasonably accommodate disabled persons is a violation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, and perhaps state law in Minnesota as well—and reasonable accommodations have always been understood to include allowing service dogs into banks, restaurants, buses, cabs, and onto elevators, Even before the ADA or other disabilities-rights laws, the accommodation of service dogs was widely recognized by Americans just as a commonsense mandate of decency.

So, in the spirit of having pushed the envelope on this one as far as its going to stretch, CAIR’s Ibrahim Hooper, (whose vision for America includes the eventual imposition of sharia law), has issued a fatwa pronouncing that, “In the case of guide dogs, the need to accommodate handicapped individuals should outweigh the discomfort Muslims might feel in having dogs in their vehicles.”

Hooper’s fatwa was a counter-fatwa to the 2006 one from Muslim American Society of Minnesota putting the Metropolitan Airport Commission on notice that Muslim taxi drivers are forbidden from carrying passengers with alcohol so as to avoid “cooperating in sin according to Islam.” (And speaking of separation of church and state, what do you want to bet there was no Christmas crèche on airport property last year?)

As it is, the Muslim cabbies have been getting away with this discrimination for several years, it taking national publicity to get the airport commissioners to bestir themsleves. All this time airport authorities could have investigated passenger complaints and suspended the licenses of cabbies known to be breaking the law, but I’m sure they hated the thought of tangling with Muslim leaders over it. It's just easier to ignore the rights of passengers complaining about being refused cab service on airport property.

Hooper says there can be a compromise. But if by “compromise,” he means that Muslim cabbies will continue to be allowed to disobey the ADA and refuse passengers with guide dogs, I don’t think that will happen. Nor will the Muslim cabbies get themselves a class-dispensation from the ADA based upon their religious prejudices against dog saliva and wine bottles.

Being a cab driver is a licensed privilege, and cab drivers have a duty not to refuse passengers for discriminatory reasons. If you can’t hack that (pun intended), find another line of work. The airport commission has the licensing authority, and will be liable for damages in discrimination lawsuits from disabilities-rights groups if they continue licensing cabbies who intentionally discriminate. Who knows, maybe even the duty-free shops may want in on those suits, too, since they’re the ones selling the packaged spirits.

CAIR’s rare willingness to “compromise” is a sign that Hooper knows he’s on the losing side on this one. Yes, the commissioners have turned a blind eye (no pun intended) to the abuse before now, but I think what’s really driving this are the commission's risk managers screaming about the municipality's lawsuit exposure.

But isn't the real lesson here that this flagrant abuse of the law tolerated for years by the airport authorities would never have been addressed if the issue hadn’t attracted national press attention?