Religious Tolerance and Intolerance, Muslims, Liquor and Religious Coercion

After the controversy over Muslim cabbies at the Minnesota airport refusing to transport passengers who are carrying alcohol and similar issues arising with Muslim cabbies refusing to transport blind people with seeing eye dogs, we now have the case of a Muslim cashier at Target who refuses to scan pork products.

Incidents like this serve as a back door for the imposition of Muslim law on Americans. If the majority of cabbies at an airport are Muslim, then carrying alcohol on your way home becomes a difficult proposition that you might as well give up on. And those who choose not to buy the alcohol, are now abiding by Muslim law. Those who are hiding it, are recognizing Muslim law while trying to avoid it.

If a store hires enough Muslim cashiers, the store may effectively not sell pork, since it won't be scanned and will create a hassle that will slow down lines. If the store stops selling pork products, it has defacto complied with Muslim law.

The argument used in defense of such actions is religious tolerance, but this entire situation emerges from the same basic misunderstanding of religious freedom and tolerance, that is at the heart of the inverted Western response to Muslim aggression.

Tolerance is not a one way street. It is a social pact in which we both agree to tolerate each other. If I tolerate you but you do not tolerate me, I no longer have any obligation to tolerate you. I would be very foolish to continue doing so, since that will only perpetuate the problem.

Tolerating intolerance is a contradiction in terms. Tolerance does not, contrary to its modern day liberal definition mean accepting everything as right without judgment, it means simply not interfering with one another. Any person with strong beliefs rejects some behaviors and values that others hold. Tolerance minimizes the clash between them.

Personally I wound find it a moral and religious problem to sell certain products. Which is why I wouldn't take certain kinds of jobs. If on taking a job I found that it required me to violate those values, I would leave. But I wouldn't employ the job as my religious bully pulpit. There are Catholic and Christian Pharmacists at Target and other stores who refuse to sell birth control products. Without commenting on the merits of the issue, if you take a job serving customers, then you either serve them or you find another job in a pharmacy whose beliefs are compatible with yours. Or open your own pharmacy.

Religious tolerance for employees means employers accommodating holidays and religious observances. It cannot however mean employees having a blank check to selectively discriminate against customers based on their religious beliefs. We'd quickly end up subject to dozens of religious beliefs we don't personally share.

It's perfectly okay for any group or religion to reject alcohol or pork or any substance or act for themselves, but they have no right to impose that rejection on others. When they do, tolerance ends and intolerance begins. I respect the rights of Muslims and Mormons not to drink alcohol, I respect the right of Witnesses to reject blood transfusions. I deny that they have any right to impose these beliefs on me or anyone.

Modern liberalism has created its own Orwellian Newspeak, redefining tolerance to mean the coercion to accept as legitimate the views, lifestyles and attitudes of those deemed to be politically correct. America's tradition of religious tolerance was an explicit rejection of religious coercion. What Muslims want however is not tolerance, but religious coercion dressed up as tolerance. In the name of tolerance, Muslims are demanding the right to enforce their own laws on others. The end result of that is the ultimate intolerance, a Muslim theocracy run under Sharia religious law. The Founders rejected the state church that England had planned. Liberal distortion of their creed is instead paving the way for a state mosque.