Thursday, January 04, 2007

The coming culture clash; Some Muslims are above the law.

Let me put it this way for the multiculturalists who bend over backward for the Muslims seeking their own rules: When my family came from Italy they didn't ask for special favors or bilingual ballots or special extra-governmental status.

They came to become Americans. They learned English and encouraged all of their children to master the ways of the American. So I tire of hearing from apologists who say I don't understand Islam or immigrants or multiculturalism.

Last year, the airports commission received a fatwa, or religious edict, from the Minnesota chapter of the Muslim American Society. The fatwa said "Islamic jurisprudence" prohibits taxi drivers from carrying passengers with alcohol, "because it involves cooperating in sin according to Islam."

Eva Buzek, a flight attendant and Minneapolis resident, said she was recently refused service by five taxi drivers when she was carrying wine as she returned from a trip to France.

"In my book, when you choose to come to a different country, you make some choices," said Buzek, a native of Poland. "I never expected everything to be the same way as in my homeland, and I adjusted. I never dreamed of imposing my beliefs on somebody else."

But Hassan Mohamud, imam at Al-Taqwa Mosque of St. Paul and director of the Islamic Law Institute at the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, one of the largest Islamic organizations in the state, said asking Muslims to transport alcohol "is a violation of their faith. Muslims do not consume, carry, sell or buy alcohol, and Islam also considers the saliva of dogs to be unclean, he said.

But many Somali taxi drivers don't have a problem transporting passengers with alcohol and are worried about a backlash, said Omar Jamal, executive director of the Somali Justice Advocacy Center. Jamal said he supports the tougher penalties.

"We tell the taxi drivers, if you don't want to do this, change your job," he said. "You are living in a country where alcohol is not viewed the way it is in your country."

We tax Catholics and other Christians who are against abortion and other policies don't we? Yet I don't see them seceding from American culture or asking for exemptions. What ever happened to assimilation? Again I stress not all Muslims think this way as the Somali quoted above suggests. But fundamentalists pose public policy issues we better deal with sooner than later.

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