Sharia Watch in Chicago

In the last year we've had a few incidents in Minneapolis, where first cab drivers at the airport refused to transport passengers who had bottles of alcohol in their luggage. Some commentary on this from Powerline concerning the disturbing links to the radical Muslim Brotherhood. And this:

In his post-column notes on the airport taxi controversy, Daniel Pipes suggested that there might be something fabricated about the issue raised by the Muslim taxi drivers:

*Neither I nor anyone I queried has ever heard of cabbies in a Muslim-majority city raising an objection to carrying a passenger with liquor. Even Ibrahim Hooper of the Council on American Islamic Relations acknowledged that the cab drivers at Minneapolis-St. Paul International are the first he's heard objecting to carrying alcohol.

*There are reasons to doubt that the drivers' understanding of the Koranic prohibition on alcohol makes sense. The ban on alcohol concerns its consumption, not its transportation. Mohammad Al-Hanooti, a specialist on Islamic law, states that "some Islamic scholars disagree altogether with the Minneapolis Muslim cabbies' interpretation of Islamic law." Al-Hanooti himself explicitly finds that "it is lawful for a Muslim driver to carry a passenger who has alcohol." He dismissed the cabbies' concerns: "They think it is unlawful because they carry this feeling from home, because they come from Muslim countries."

Apparently the Muslim American Society issued a new fatwa. Next came cashiers at Target refusing to scan pork. But a reader to that post comments:

I just got back from a year in Bahrain where I was working at NAVCENT. Bahrain is a shia majority country ruled by a sunni family - so there's lots of room for conflict, but as Arab countries go, it's quite good. We were allowed to live in town - which is quite remarkable in today's Force Protection concious military.

There is no shortage of pork in Bahrain - most of it Danish. It is segregated off to the side of the store, sort of the food equivalent to the X rated DVD rental section, but the cashiers - Bahraini women with their heads covered - no veil - had no problem scanning the food.

And let us recall the flying imams' possible terrorist dry run also originated at the Minneapolis airport, even as they also claimed discrimination. Then they tried to sue ordinary Americans who reported specific suspicious behavior--one being requesting multiple lapbelt extensions as a group and then putting them under their seats.

Is this a prelude to a more sustained push for Sharia law in Chicago? Now we have pork at issue for a Chicago area Dunkin' Donuts franchise owner. No ham and egg sandwich for you. Tribune story here.

Since he's an owner, he doesn't have much of a case.

But this prohibition on touching pork seems to vary from imam to imam.

And some of this activity seems a concerted effort to exploit our multiculti-leaning society to push us toward Sharia law. Tolerance yes. But tolerance cuts both ways. And our American society will never condone most interpretations of Sharia which call for women to be treated as second class citizens and worse. And for gays to be killed outright.

Related posts: Terror Dry Runs, In Search of Reform Muslims