Hat tip Jihad Watch
This is a disturbing story out of New York. Of course, we know that New York City is famous for rude cab drivers. It has now risen to new heights. An Uber driver, Muhammad Qayyum, refused to transport a woman's service dog and physically threw it out of the cab causing injuries. The man was charged with animal cruelty, and the story was reported in the New York Post, sort of.
http://nypost.com/2016/01/26/uber-driver-attacks-pregnant-womans-service-dog-cops/
Jihad Watch picked up on the story and put some additional perspective as to why this incident likely occurred.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/01/sharia-new-york-city-muslim-uber-driver-attacks-pregnant-womans-service-dog/comment-page-1#comment-1367461
Good thing for Qayyum that the dog's owner was a woman. Had it been a man in that cab with the dog, well, you know..........
As someone who does not allow dogs, cats, or any other animal in the house, I sympathize with a cab driver who does not want a dog in his vehicle, and even more so with an Uber driver, who is driving his own personal vehicle.
ReplyDeleteThis of course raises one of the many weaknesses in the Uber business model. IF it were just an informal ride-sharing board, it wouldn't be controversial, but the more it becomes a way people earn their livelihood, we begin to belatedly recognize that the regulation of the cab industry had good reason: public safety, vehicle safety, quality of service, etc. Ditto the more Uber and Lyft emerge as profitable transporation business models...
But back to the question of dogs. I drove a paratransit bus for five years, and OF COURSE I accepted that people with service dogs could and would travel with them. That was part of the service and part of the job. I can make a plausible argument along that line for a cab driver: he is working in an industry that performs a public service and may not discriminate.
Still, I have some sympathies. That includes the fact that if your religion and your upbringing teaches that dogs are ritually unclean, it is really disturbing to have one in your car. Some apartment buildings do not allow pets -- for obvious reasons. Others advertise that pets are welcome -- again, for obvious reasons. As long as there is a good mix available, that's not a problem. People who don't want pets can live in places that don't allow them, and people with pets can live in places that do, around people who share that taste. Fortunately, owning a pet is not yet a "civil right."
For that matter, the Open Housing Law contains an exception for an owner-occupied dwelling with four or fewer units. No matter how irrational your animus may be, you are not required by law to "tolerate" whatever you have a phobia about in or near your own home.
Just because Gary doesn't like Islam and only issues perfunctory statements of bare tolerance for Muslims does not raise this issue of a dog in the car to the level of Islamophobia Alert.
Two comments:
ReplyDelete1 If you want to drive a cab (Uber) even if it is your own car, you have to abide by the rules. If not find another job.
2 There was no excuse for physically mistreating the animal.
The question, Gary, is what The Rules should in fact be. What is reasonable, what is constitutional, what is the best balance we can all live by? The cab driver's preferences are not utterly unreasonable or unworthy of consideration.
ReplyDeleteI've been tempted to physically mistreat animals. The triggers are, if they keep trying to get close to me when I've made clear I'm not the human who wants to play with them, and, if some human who adores animals keeps pressing on me that I simply must learn to adore them too. However, I give ample trigger warnings, and have not gotten so overheated that I take out on the animals what is really the fault of the obsessive humans who bring them around.
Islam is incidental to these questions, at most, although you and that opportunistic woman on the speaker circuit want to make it the center of every controversy under the sun.
"If you want to drive a cab (Uber) even if it is your own car, you have to abide by the rules. If not find another job."
ReplyDeleteI agree 100%.
I am sure that Gary Fouse also feels this way about Christian bakers, florists, and county clerks who refuse service to gay people.
As for bakers and florists, I don't think they should be driven out of business for refusing service. There are other bakers and florists right down the street. As for the County Clerk in Ky, she is supposed to follow the law. She was wrong. I may not agree with same sex marriage, but it is the law of the land-in all 50 states. Surely a compromise could be found whereby other officials signed the licenses.
ReplyDeleteWe all agree that Kim Davis was wrong. She has to carry out the functions of her public office. I expect that in twenty years Obergefell will be overturned for the same reason as Bowers v. Hardwick both were wrongly decided. But until then, she must do her job, or resign, or be removed, or jailed.
ReplyDeleteI know of no Christian bakers, florists, or photographers who have refused service to gay people. Some have refused to cater a same-sex marriage, or commitment ceremony, on the ground that the ceremony itself would implicate them in an expressive message that is abhorrent to them. I agree. The First Amendment protects people from compelled speech. Its no different than requiring a print shop owner whose voting for Bernie Sanders to silk screen t-shirts for Ted Cruz's campaign. It would be like telling a kosher store owner, or a halal store owner, that he is discriminating against Christians because he doesn't carry ham and bacon.
I note that the photographer may not exclude students from school photos "because they are gay," may not refuse to take passport photos of two same-sex women "because they are gay," and a bakery may not refuse to sell a cake off the shelf to a customer "because they are gay." But the baker has every right to refuse to decorate a cake with the message "Adam and Steve, together forever in wedded bliss" with two male dolls on top of the cake.