Veiled threat: separating mosque from mass transit

While the MAC rejected the appeal, this did not stop Muslims turning down an average of three fares a day. Each refusal based on their religious objection to alcohol, according to MSP Airport spokesman, Mr Patrick Hogan.

"Travellers often feel surprised and insulted [when they are refused]," Mr Hogan added.

With this in mind, the MAC proposed a pragmatic solution: drivers refusing to carry alcohol could get a special colour light on their car roofs, broadcasting to one and all their commitment to the Holy Koran. From the airport's point of view, this scheme offered a sensible and efficient mechanism to resolve what it considered to be a minor irritant, leaving both passengers and drivers happy. As Mr Hogan explained: "Airport authorities are not in the business of interpreting sacred texts or dictating anyone's religious choices." The two-light proposal was to be in operation by the end of the holiest month in the Islamic calendar in 2006, Ramadan.

But the proposed solution had massive implications. The two-light plan in effect imposed Sharia, or Islamic law, with state sanction on a mundane commercial transaction. A government authority was thus tasked with publically identifying which taxi driver followed in the footsteps of the Prophet Mohammed and which driver did not.

As luck would have it, the MAC proposed solution never saw light of day. Taxi owners, savvy as they are, feared that customers would boycott Muslim taxis, identifiable by their lights. They also feared that customers would soon boycott taxis altogether and use other means of transportation.

Just before the end of Ramadan of 2008 nine cabbies, a mix of owner-drivers and non-owner drivers, went to the Minnesota Court of Appeals and departed very unhappy, when reminded that Muslim cabbies risk losing their taxi licenses if they give passengers the middle finger.

The men said their religious beliefs prohibited them from carrying alcohol. But the Appeals Court was unmoved, upholding the lower court's decision. Both courts said that the respondents failed to show that they would suffer irreparable harm if they were not granted the right to refuse.

And so we come back to the incident in Greystanes.

An unwarranted allowance was sought in order to accommodate another culture. An allowance that serves only to magnify the folly that is known as “multiculturalism”. This ideology is a demonstrated failure in the United States, the United Kingdom and the European Union and is shameless minority vote buying. With devastating consequences for social cohesion. Devastating.