Today Reuters does their best to whitewash the story of the Muslim cabbies who refused to pick up passengers carrying alcohol (or blind passengers with guide dogs, although Reuters doesn’t mention that because it wrecks the sympathy angle). The cabbies are seething at a new rule that says they have to do their jobs.

In Reutersworld, this is just a culture clash; rude American barbarians against deeply religious people with a “seamless rule for life:” Minnesota Muslims in culture clash at airport.

MINNEAPOLIS (Reuters) - For Mahamed Jama, a Minnesota taxi driver, the Islamic restriction on drinking alcohol is a seamless rule for life.

“He who carries alcohol, he who drinks and he who sells it are the same thing,” he says. That belief could affect his livelihood.

The commission that runs the Minneapolis airports in May began enforcing a new policy allowing it to revoke the licenses of drivers who refuse to ferry passengers carrying alcohol — something that has happened to 4,854 travelers trying to get a cab at Minneapolis International Airport in the last five years.

“The increased penalties appear to have brought drivers into compliance,” airport spokesman Patrick Hogan said of the policy — a 30-day license suspension for a first infraction and a two-year license revocation for a second.

Although Hogan said the measure was implemented without incident, it has provoked outrage among some of the 900 cab drivers who work the airport. About three quarters of them are Somali, most of whom are Muslim.

“A few of them are really, really upset about it,” said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center in neighboring St. Paul. “They believe they have been forced into something against their faith, something against their religion.”

Naturally, Reuters continues to call on unindicted Hamas co-conspirators CAIR when they need a quote.

Ahmed Rehab, executive director of the Chicago office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said the drivers are using a “strict and rigid” interpretation of Islamic law.

Also naturally, they find a “human rights” expert who’s willing to defend the discriminatory cabbies and suggest that rude impatient Americans should just get used to being treated this way.

But Stephen Cooper, former commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Human Rights, said the change from the previous policy, in which drivers refusing a fare went to the back of the line, is unwarranted.

“Five or six times a month, somebody will get the second or third cab, rather than the first cab,” Cooper said. “That seems pretty minor.”

Mr. Cooper needs to brush up on his mathematics. 4,854 incidents in five years is an average of 80.9 incidents a month—not “five or six.”