Muslim Cab Driver in Paris: ‘I Won’t Take You, You Dirty Jew’
“If I did take you, I would kill you, your wife, and your children.”
An Israeli family — father, mother, and three children — on October 11 landed at Orly Airport in Paris on a flight from Tel Aviv. After retrieving their luggage at the carrousel, they patiently waited at the taxi stand, and when they finally reached the head of the line, they began to enter the lead taxi when the driver suddenly noticed something — the father’s kippah, most likely, or possibly her Orthodox wig, (if they were Orthodox) or both — that gave away the fact that they were Jewish, and he became furious. He screamed at them: “I’m not taking you — you dirty Jew.” More on his rage, and the consequences he now faces, can be found here: “‘I Am Not Taking You, Dirty Jew’: Paris Cab Driver Charged With Discrimination, Violent Threats,” by Ben Cohen, Algemeiner, November 24, 2023:
A taxi driver in Paris has been charged with discrimination and making death threats after he refused to drive a Jewish family who arrived on a flight from Israel at Orly Airport in the French capital.
French media reported on Friday that the family of two parents with their three children were subjected to vicious antisemitic abuse from the driver as they waited in a taxi line outside the airport after disembarking [from] a flight from Tel Aviv on Oct. 11 — four days after the Hamas pogrom in southern Israel in which more than 1,200 people were murdered.
As the family tried to enter the taxi, the driver told the father, “I am not taking you, dirty Jew.” He then added in both French and Arabic, “If I did take you, I would kill you, your wife, and your children.”
Well, that Muslim cabdriver certainly didn’t hold back. And thank god he did not, because with those words “if I did take you, I would kill you,” he has just made his own life very difficult.
A police investigation into the 28-year-old driver, who has not been named, was launched after the father reported his family’s ordeal to the local authorities. A report from the Paris Prefect of Police specified that he had not pursued a complaint “for fear of reprisals.”
The father won’t pursue a complaint because, quite sensibly, he’s afraid the cabdriver and other members of the Muslim tribe could come after him. But the police are a different matter. They know what happened, and they don’t need the father’s further participation to prosecute the cabdriver.
The driver appeared in a court in the Paris suburb of Creteil on Nov. 9. charged with making “repeated death threats” based on ethnicity and religion. His trial will not commence until May 6 next year.
One of the taxi companies which uses the driver’s services announced that he had been suspended.
The company, G7, said that while the incident at Orly was not the result of one of its bookings, it had suspended the driver “to show absolute firmness towards all forms of violence and discrimination.”…
How many other cab companies employ this Muslim cabdriver? What is keeping them from cutting ties with a driver who uses hate speech, and threatens to kill the entire family of this “dirty Jew” if he were to give them a ride? One hopes those other companies will soon follow the example of G7, depriving the cabdriver of most, if not all, of his custom.
At a time when antisemitism has been increasing at a dizzying and depressing rate in France, emanating almost entirely from its chief carriers, the Muslim migrants and citizens, it is good that the government promises to take a hard line in this case. When the Transport Minister, Clement Beaune, stresses the “gravity” of the incident — the refusal of a common carrier to take a passenger because of his ethnicity, and indulges in hate speech (“dirty Jew”), and even threatens to commit murder (“If I did take you, I would kill you, your wife, and your children”) — you know that a fitting, because severe, punishment is being prepared.
When Beaune promised that “we’re not going to let anything pass,” I take it that the offending cabdriver will have his commercial license revoked. That will end his career as a cabdriver. But never fear. There’s always street sweeping, garbage collecting, and halal butchering, jobs where no Jews will disturb his peace of mind.
Jews Under Mid-19th Century Palestinian Sharia, Versus American Freedom
Why restoring Sharia governance remains an unacceptable “option” .
by Andrew G. Bostom 3 Comments
The trickle of prisoner releases of those non-combatant Jews captured, but not slaughtered during Hamas’ October 7, 2023 jihad carnage in southern Israel, should remind us of what Hamas, or Palestinian Authority Sharia (Islamic Law)-based rule for surviving Jews would entail. That “vision” was laid out plainly during a July 6, 2001 Gaza sermon at the Ijlin mosque by Sheikh Muhammad Ibrahim al-Mahdi:
Israel Joseph (I.J.) Benjamin [1818-1864], was a “maggid”, an itinerant Jewish preacher, best known for his extensive first hand mid-19th century travelogue accounts of the Jewish communities of Africa and Asia (“Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855”), and subsequently, America (“Three years in America, 1859-1862”). Benjamin’s writings were supported by letters and various other memorabilia he collected during his journeys, and ultimately garnered contemporary approval as “truthful and simple narrative” accounts by respected scholars of his era such as Alexander von Humboldt, Carl Ritter, and Julius Heinrich Petermann.
Benjamin’s observations from “Eight years in Asia and Africa from 1846 to 1855”, and “Three years in America, 1859-1862,” allow, uniquely, for a direct comparison of the condition of Jews in mid-19th century Palestine under the jurisdiction of Sharia, relative to their simultaneous American experience under United States Constitutional law. The mid-19th century United States, in addition, was a devoutly Christian country, as noted by Alexis de Tocqueville:
Mid-19th century Palestinian Jewry was subjected to rule under Ottoman Muslim administration, and its jurisprudence. Molla Khosrew (d. 1480) was a celebrated writer and jurist, who was appointed the Ottoman Shaykh-al-Islam (highest ranking Ottoman Muslim religious official) by Sultan Mehmed II in 1469. One of Molla Khosrew’s authoritative, widely cited legal works—laying out the still operative binding imperatives for 19th century Palestine–reiterated the classical views on Sharia-based governance of Muslims, and their overall legal inequality including specific restrictions on religious and social freedoms. For example, he restated these classical views on the jizya—a blood ransom poll-tax demanded in lieu of being slain and completely dispossessed. The jizya was collected regularly (most often annually), in person, and in a manner that conferred the subject’s humiliation, due to their willingly imperfect belief, consistent with Koran 9:29. Of note also, is the specific admonition to Jews:
Also in accord with classical Islamic jurisprudence, Molla Khosrew outlines the typical regulations—regarding religious structures and practice, the prohibition on bearing arms, and distinguishing forms of dress, modes of travel, neighborhoods, and abodes—which complemented the jizya collection, and formed the basis for the system of dhimmitude (in this specific case, the Ottoman version). The Ottoman system of dhimmitude—consistent with all other variants of this Sharia-based institution—conferred upon Jews (and all dhimmis) two basic legal disabilities which denied them both protection, and redress, when victimized: prohibition of the right to bear arms; and the inadmissibility of dhimmi legal evidence when a Muslim was a party. Even the series of reforms imposed by European powers (as so-called “capitulations”) upon the weakening Ottoman Empire during its final eight decades, almost continuously (through 1914), failed to rectify these institutionalized legal discriminations in a substantive manner.
I.J. Benjamin’s mid-19th century observations on the Jewish community of Palestine confirmed what the application of this bigoted and humiliating system wrought, predictably, highlighting five areas of concern:
Benjamin’s recording of the condition of American Jews at the outset of the Civil War was a study in stark contrasts, auguring what Jews liberated from the Sharia might achieve in their indigenous homeland:
Charting how the Jews’ “tireless industry” gave rise to their prosperity, Benjamin noted that the “political position of the Jews kept pace with this rapid commercial development.” As “every office was open to all without distinction of religion or birth,” he further observed,
Restoring Sharia governance to all of historical Palestine has been an Arab Muslim goal since former Ottoman governor of Jaffa, and President of the Arab Palestinian Congress, Musa Kasem el-Husseini’s exhortation to the British High Commissioner in 1920. I.J. Benjamin’s chronicle underscores why that should remain an unacceptable outcome.
Dr. Bostom is a retired Brown University Associate Professor of Medicine, and the author of 5 books on Islam including his updated The Legacy of Islamic Antisemitism.
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