Tough Love, Or Leave It

The Opinion Journal has a troubling piece on certain Muslim groups in Minnesota. It's the usual suspects, CAIR, etc.

MINNEAPOLIS--The land of 10,000 lakes and that welcoming attitude we call "Minnesota Nice"--is becoming a window on America's potential future. Here in Minneapolis, one of the nation's most livable cities, hard-line Muslim activists are injecting an element that is anything but nice.

Troubling incidents began several years ago, when taxi drivers at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport--about three-quarters of whom are Muslim--started refusing to transport passengers carrying alcohol. One woman, returning from France with wine, was turned away by five cabs in succession. Refusals of service now number about 100 a month, and heated altercations have erupted.

Read the whole thing. Two things stuck out for me. The article quoted some moderate Muslim groups I hadn't heard of - that's good. Now if only the mainstream media would start getting opinions from those groups and not only the more radical CAIR.

The other element that stuck out was more troubling. Rather than looking to accommodate Muslim intolerance being professed to the many by some few, we should be rejecting it and telling the intolerant individuals to either adjust to a free and open society, or hit the road.

I know how the average American will react on the issue; I trust them. I don't trust our weak-kneed justice system and politicians who will cave to any group if it means a few votes. Any notion that tenets of sharia law have their place in even our informal ways of going about our business need to be opposed and rejected in the strongest of terms.

If we don't head it off now, we'll be fighting in the streets over this issue. Americans will not sit idly by and allow an intolerant, radical fringe group to start dictating our practices and behaviors.

Such a confrontation would make any current culture war look like a picnic in July.

Comments

[Gus]

tk, could you elaborate? I'm not sure I understand. Are you agreeing that the business world is a neutral place, so pharmacists shouldn't deny adults legal medication? It seems like you're saying that one religious belief is more important. I will grant you that I am more likely to be sympathetic to the Christian, since I find Muslim proscriptions on alcohol, pork and dogs ridiculous (not to mention the fact that I love beer, pork chops and my two mutts). However, looked at in the cold light of the market (which I thought conservatives worship only somewhat less fervently:), the two are equal. In each case someone's religious convictions are potentially causing me the denial of a perfectly legal product/service.

[tk]

Zifnab... You try too hard. You are an empty vessel spouting some limiting facts which have you truly believing you are informed. Of course you do not hate Christians, you just hate very thing they stand for. Then you want to talk about denominations, a wonderful old trick of divide and reconquer. Then you go to your base, "pulling extrament out of your posterior." Brilliant. Then the old anti-semitic charge.

The truth is you just hate, pure and simple. If not, tell me something you can live with about a person you so completely disagree with, but still understand their point of view.

[southdakotaboy]

Funny how I don't see that kind of stuff your talking about much on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, ABC, NBC or even Fox for that matter. And yet there seem to be plenty of stories about what bad things Christians are doing.
Also when the left is loseing an argument they fall back on name calling and that old favorite of "oh yah name some".
And ZIFNAB answer the questions I asked you and not change the subject. We get that the left finds the Christian Right repulsive and repugnent what I want to know is why you on the left seem happy to turn a blind eye towards muslims.
Njorl being able to read and look at what the left in this county does is not listening to our own propaganda. The left in this country is like the man caught cheating on his wife who says " Who you going to believe honey me or those lieing eyes of yours."

[Hard Right]

Lefties, why do you NOT have a problem with muslims gradually forcing other Americans to abide by Muslim religious beliefs?

[Hard Right]

*crickets get tired of chirping*

[Delta Phi]

If the Muslim cab drivers don't want to drive sober people who have legal products on their person or in their luggage, their hack license should be revoked.

If a cashier does not want to scan some product the store sells, that person has every right to refuse, and the store has every right to fire their ass.

If a pharmacist does not want to fill a prescription for Plan B, their pharmacy license should be revoked.

Life is about deciding were you want to work, and what stands you want to take. As a pharmacist, you don't get to choose what drugs you will dispense. As a cab driver, you drive people. And obviously as a cashier you check people out of the store.

You don't get to make moral judgments about people. You can protest the availability of Plan b, or pepperoni pizza for that matter, but you cannot push your beliefs on your employer or the customers. You can always quit the job. Why have we evolved a system that allows people to take a job they have issues with and then claim religious persecution? Would it be ok for an Amish person to take a job as a truck driver, and then sue the company for violating their religious beliefs?

[employment discrimination employee in missouri]

Pretext exists where the ostensible reason for the employment decision is really a lie contrived to mask unlawful discrimination. . . . This circuit adheres to the honest- belief rule: even if the business decision was ill- considered or unreasonable, provided that the decisionmaker honestly believed the nondiscriminatory reason he gave for the action, pretext does not exist. . . .