Minneapolis Shari'a Watch

Tue, Mar 13, 2007 at 9:15:24 am PDT

Minneapolis is the scene of yet another intrusion of extremist shari’a law into US society, as Muslim cashiers at Target stores are refusing to handle pork.

The other day, I got a call from someone who said that an employee at the Target store downtown refused to run his bacon through a scanning machine. He was mighty upset, arguing that the cashier had “no right to work as a cashier at Target” if she wasn’t prepared to swipe his groceries.

But he was a little vague on the details, so I decided to check it out myself. At the Target store on E. Lake Street, a cashier wearing a burka looked uncomfortable when I showed up at the cash register with a frozen pepperoni pizza. She immediately called for help, and another employee rang up the pizza and placed it in the basket.

I asked her if it was because she was Muslim, and she nodded her head. “I can’t even touch it,” she said.

Of course, any bacon or pepperoni pizzas for sale at Target would be shrink-wrapped in plastic, then boxed in some kind of cardboard package, so no cashier could ever physically touch the dreaded pork.

But then, this really isn’t about the pork.