Twin Cities International Airport is dropping its plan to abide by shari’a law for Muslim taxi drivers: Airport Drops Muslim Cabbie Compromise. (Hat tip: LGF readers.)

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — Airport officials gave up Tuesday on a proposal to meant to ensure that travelers carrying liquor don’t get stranded at the curb by Muslim cabbies who refuse to transport alcohol.

Hundreds of the taxi drivers who serve Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport are Muslims, and many of them, citing Islamic prohibitions against alcohol, refuse to knowingly take passengers who are carrying see-through bags of duty-free liquor, wine boxes from the Napa Valley and the like.

The Metropolitan Airports Commission had been working with the Muslim American Society and taxi companies on a pilot program under which drivers who won’t take riders carrying alcohol would put a different top light on their cabs. That would have allowed airport employees to direct these travelers to willing drivers.

But the Metropolitan Airports Commission said the public response was overwhelmingly negative, and some taxi companies feared that people opposed to the system would switch to other forms of ground transport instead of cabs. …

Jeff Hamiel, executive director of the airports commission, said he hopes representatives from the taxi industry will keep working toward a solution. “The bottom line is that no one should be denied taxi service simply because they have alcohol in their possession,” Hamiel said.

For now, though, taxi drivers who refuse to carry these travelers will continue to forfeit their place in the taxi queue and return to the back of the line, which often means a three-hour wait for another fare.

In fact, these drivers shouldn’t just go to the back of the line, they should lose their licenses. This behavior is un-American, and we wouldn’t even think of allowing this kind of outrageous discrimination if it were directed at any other group of people, for any other reason.

UPDATE at 10/11/06 8:28:57 am:

Daniel Pipes has a good piece explaining why accommodating this Islamic prejudice isn’t just a bad idea—it’s dangerous: Don’t Bring That Booze into My Taxi.

MAC proposed a pragmatic solution: drivers unwilling to carry alcohol could get a special color light on their car roofs, signaling their views on alcohol to taxi starters and customers alike. From the airport’s point of view, this scheme offers a sensible and efficient mechanism to resolve a minor irritant, leaving no passenger insulted and no driver losing business. “Airport authorities are not in the business of interpreting sacred texts or dictating anyone’s religious choices,” Hogan points out. “Our goal is simply to ensure travelers at [the airport] are well served.” Awaiting approval only from the airport’s taxi advisory committee, the two-light proposal will likely be in operation by the end of 2006.

But on a societal level, the proposed solution has massive and worrisome implications. Namely, the two-light plan intrudes the Shari‘a, or Islamic law, with state sanction, into a mundane commercial transaction in Minnesota. A government authority thus sanctions a signal as to who does or does not follow Islamic law.

What of taxi drivers beyond those at MSP? Other Muslims in Minneapolis-St. Paul and across the country could well demand the same privilege. Bus conductors might follow suit. The whole transport system could be divided between those Islamically observant and those not so.

Why stop with alcohol? Muslim taxi drivers in several countries already balk at allowing seeing-eye dogs in their cars. Future demands could include not transporting women with exposed arms or hair, homosexuals, and unmarried couples. For that matter, they could ban men wearing kippas, as well as Hindus, atheists, bartenders, croupiers, astrologers, bankers, and quarterbacks.

MAC has consulted on the taxi issue with the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society, an organization the Chicago Tribune has established is devoted to turning the United States into a country run by Islamic law. The wife of a former head of the organization, for example, has explained that its goal is “to educate everyone about Islam and to follow the teachings of Islam with the hope of establishing an Islamic state.”