Little Green Footballs

Monday, April 02, 2007

Desperation

It must've been a slow news day on the Muslim hatin' front for poor old Charlie. If the best story he can come up with is this as a demonstration of Islamic extremism.

Blind woman Gry Berg, accompanied by her guide dog, was denied entry into four taxis in the center of the city of Oslo, Norway, this March. Three of the drivers claimed that their unwillingness to accept her dog was due to allergy, while the fourth one simply locked the car doors and refused to give an explanation for why he wouldn’t let Ms. Berg into his cab.

Andreas Strand, leader of the youth organization of The Norwegian Association of the Blind and Partially Sighted, reacts strongly to this treatment. “It makes it difficult for blind people to live a social life,” he says. Strand claims that it has become an increasingly common problem that blind people accompanied by guide dogs are denied access to taxis, and has written a letter of complaint to the three companies whose drivers were involved in this particular incident.

Now, the police and the local transportation authorities will cooperate on punishing drivers who refuse to accept dogs into their cars. Director Odd Bratteberg of the Transportation Authority in Oslo warns that they will conduct random tests at taxi stands, and that drivers who refuse to accept passengers with dogs risk having their license revoked.
Am I the only person missing the Muslim angle? Or the religious objection to seeing eye dogs? Maybe the cab drivers were just assholes?

Maybe he should stop taking nods from Fjordman. We all know what kind of crank he is.

Source: littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=24990&only&rsssmall

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

so you havent heard of muslim taxi drivers refusing rides for blind people or people. You are also unable to draw any conclusion that there is a large muslim population in Olso who drive taxis?

The Sphinx said...

Just because a couple of Muslims have done it before doesn't at all mean that it's a registered trademark of Muslim taxi drivers. They're not the only taxi drivers around, and they're human beings just like all the other drivers (Surprise surprise).

So you're free to draw that conclusion if you want. It still remains baseless. And I guess nobody likes relying on baseless assumptions, for credibility's sake.

Anonymous said...

> Like the thing with the riots at the French train station.

It has become an article of faith for the U.S. lunatic-right-wing that any disturbances in Paris are related to Islam. In this case, the guy who started the fracas is Congolese, a country that's about 10% muslim, 70% christian, 20% other.
The other rioters were either his friends or passers-by who thought he was being treated too roughly by the police. I've seen several similar incidents in Paris where people get involved on behalf of the "victim" if they think the authorities are acting too harshly.

This incident has more to do with
(1) the French propensity to riot at the drop of a hat
(2) the large number of unemployed young men who hang out at Gare du Nord

than with any imagined intifada that fearmongers would like to scare you with.

Anonymous said...

Many cab drivers refuse to take dogs. It has nothing to do with their religion. They're not making much and they're afraid the dog will stink or will crap in the cab. That's all there is to it.