Veiled threat: separating mosque from mass transit

On May 13, 2009, Arriva one of Denmark’s leading transport operators and originally a company formed in Sunderland, in northeast England, declared that observant Muslim women in Denmark will have to remove their face veils when their travel passes are being checked.

Other Danish bus companies have introduced the rule after two incidents where Arriva drivers refused to allow passengers wearing the niqab to travel on their buses.

Bus companies argued successfully that it is not unreasonable for passengers holding photo travel passes to identify themselves to the driver or the conductor. Those passengers who refuse to show their faces will be forced to buy another ticket to get on board.

Seems pretty fair to me. Despite the shallow objections.

Another lit fuse where the primacy of the mosque was placed ahead of the state occurred in 2007, when Muslim taxi drivers in the city of Minneapolis, Minnesota, decided to reinstate their bans on transporting passengers who arrived at Minneapolis-St Paul Airport (MSP) carrying alcohol or were in the company of guide dogs. These two items apparently offended the drivers’ sensibilities.

In 2007, about 100 people a month were denied cab service at MSP, many by drivers who refused, point blank, to transport alcohol in their cabs. Nearly 700 of the airport’s 900 cabbies are Somali, most of whom are Muslim.

In 2006, the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society issued Minneapolis’ Metropolitan Airports Commission with a fatwa, or religious edict. The fatwa stated that "Islamic jurisprudence" prohibits taxi drivers from carrying passengers with alcohol "because it involves co-operating in sin according to Islam".

The issue got a head of steam in the late 1990s, when some Muslim taxi drivers serving the airport unilaterally declared that they would boycott passengers visibly carrying alcohol in, for instance, see through duty-free shopping bags. This stance stemmed from their interpretation of the Koran's ban on liquor.

One driver named Mr Fuad Omar explained: "This is our religion. We could be punished in the afterlife if we agree to transport alcohol." Another driver, Mr Muhamed Mursal, echoed his words: "It is forbidden in Islam to carry alcohol."

Some cab drivers and a noted Islamic scholar, Mr Muhammed Al-Hanooti, disagreed stating that the Koran forbade not the carrying, but the drinking of alcohol.

The issue emerged publicly again in 2000. On one occasion, 16 drivers in a row refused one passenger with bottles of alcohol. This left the passenger - who was legally in the right - feeling like a criminal. And it left the 16 drivers with a loss in income. At MSP, cabbies who refuse passengers for any reason are sent to the very back of the taxi rank, where they can wait for hours before landing a fare.

To avoid this quandary, Muslim taxi drivers called for the Metropolitan Airports Commission to grant them the right to refuse passengers carrying or even suspected of carrying liquor, without the sanction of being banished to the end of the line if they refused. The MAC rejected this appeal, worried that drivers might offer religion as an excuse to refuse short-distance passengers.