CabDogs

The news of late has been about some radical Muslim cabbies refusing to carry guide dogs. Whilst this is a growing phenomena overseas it's the first I've heard of in Sydney. Though there was evidence of same from Melbourne last year.

Howard Harrison of the NSW Taxi Council summed up the feeling of most last night on ABC TV, a comment along the lines of - if those cabbies won't take dogs then they can either get another religion or get another job.

I've carried guide dogs but am reluctant to carry owner's pets, unless they sit on the owner's laps and don't engage in window licking, slobbering and/or jumping around.

Does anyone know how devout, blind Muslims get around; they don't use guide dogs..?

Comments

[SurferCam]

Great post Adrian.
When does religion become part of a job?
My 'religion' states that I should be at the pub from 1pm onwards on a Friday, but my job doesn't allow it...

[Roy Wilke]

How do devout, blind Muslims get around if they don't use guide dogs? At a guess, I'd say they use white canes.

[PQ]

Guide Goats? :-)

[marcelproust]

My guess is that they either do not get around or, if a stick is not sufficient, they get a person to help them.

[Pannu]

Adrian
Don't know about how Blind Muslim travel (Not muslim )?
I drive/Operate Taxi in sydney. Never ever had a trouble with guide dog owner.Dogs (Not BULLDOGS) are well Behaved.

[adrian]

Spoke with a Muslim cabbie last night who revealed plenty of blind Muslims use guide dogs. He insisted Islam respected guide dogs and dismissed refuseniks as not true brothers.

[Anthony]

The whole dog issue is about asserting their "rights" and playing their part in The Grievance Theatre.

[Mark]

Having driven a taxi in Townsville Queensland for 30 years I know that we are required by law to carry guide dogs....and get into deep do-do if we don't....as far as other pets go provided they are in one of those carry cages we carry em....most times animal passengers are better behaved than some of the human ones :)

[slatts]

My train got cancelled the other day and as often happens with such occurrences, I got chatting to a fellow traveller while we waited for the bus. He was going up to the city to buy his week's supply of halel meat as there's no muslim butcher in our town. He could see I was interested in his background and he volunteered that extremists were making life hard for ordinary-Joe muslims like him. "I love Australia,'' he said. "The Australian government gave us money for our mosque, how could we hate Australians?"
He was getting steamed up and quite loud and couldn't understand why Australian authorities just didn't kick out the likes of Halili.
"They're not muslims. They're just troublemakers."
Like me, he was cheesed off with the travel delay, and I wondered whether he'd have been so forthright had things gone smoothly that day. Anyway, I'm bound to run into him again at the station and look forward to our next chat.

[Cheryl]

Guide dogs can ride in my taxi if they are dry black with short hair and bathed recently, wet whitish with long hair shed in taxi takes some vacuuming not to mention next pax sneezing with reaction to dog hair and smell. The latest request was, a pet companion dog to ride in the taxi home, because it was raining both were sopping wet and smelly! refusal offen offends...after all it is our work place we never see a sopping wet dog in a bank, cafe or offices of MoT etc