Deaf-Blind Virginian Denied Restaurant Service Because of Her Service Dog, Islamic Belief Behind It?

A deaf-blind Virginian woman and her husband were denied service in a restaurant because of her service dog, according to this WLJA ABC Channel 7 news report posted last Friday. The restaurant managers basically told the couple to leave because of the service dog. The couple tried to explain that there are federal and state laws allowing such accommodations for people with disabilities and service dogs. Still, that didn’t matter to the restaurant managers, but the couple was forced to call the police to intervene.

Excerpt:

Forty-seven-year-old Christine Calabrese is legally blind, hearing impaired and suffers from severe balance problems. She needs her service dog for help walking in addition to seeing and hearing. But on a trip through southern Virginia the Calabreses were told the dog was not welcome at an area restaurant.

In the article, the restaurant managers were identified as Ahmed Ahmed and Fathy Morsy. Another article has one commentator pointing out that the managers are from Egypt.

They (Napoli’s owners) are from Egypt and my guess is, (guessing here because of the language barrier) they just had no idea there was such a thing as special needs/accomodations (sic) for people because there is no Egyptian equivalent.

Now you’re probably wondering why I included “Islamic belief behind it?” in the blog’s title? Egypt is about 90% Muslim and there is a strong Islamic belief among Muslims that all dogs are considered unclean. In most Muslim countries, keeping dogs as pets are forbidden; in some countries, dogs are allowed for only hunting and guarding purposes. This is basically a touchy religious-cultural issue for Muslims regarding dogs, especially for Muslims living in Western countries that love and adore dogs. If the restaurant managers are Muslim, then you should know why they asked the couple with the service dog to leave. If they aren’t, no difference there, after all, they grew up with Islamic norms.

In the last few years, there have been reports of Muslim taxi drivers denying blind customers with service dogs (see link for Google results). This has been a serious problem for the blind, since they needed taxi services to go to places that aren’t on the bus routes or too far from it. Lawsuits or complaint suits against taxi companies were filed and settled in the court of law. Taxi companies were directed to train Muslim drivers about the necessity of service dogs for people with disabilities and pick them up when requested, despite Muslim drivers’ religious objections.

The above commentator added the managers had no idea there was such a thing as specials or accommodations for people with disabilities. Even the manager Fathy Morsy claimed that he didn’t know about the Americans with Disabilities Act. I called bullshit on it.

If you’re an owner or manager of a restaurant business, you should know about the laws – the labor, employee, and wage laws, the alcoholics beverage law, food health and safety laws, property law, the ADA law, and other laws. Ignorance of these laws is no excuse and that restaurant managers at Napoli’s know it.

Ahmed and Morsy simply used their Islamic belief about dogs as a mean to suggest that “other customers complained” about the deaf-blind woman’s service dog in their restaurant and force the couple out.

Muslims living in the United States (or in any Western country) should learn to get used to the kind of things that aren’t allowed in the Islamic countries and try to work around them or adapt to them. Age-old or superstitious religious-cultural beliefs from other countries have little or no place in the United States and peoples accustomed to them shouldn’t expect other Americans to accustom to their religious-cultural beliefs just because it matters to people like Muslims. Ultra-orthodox Jews in America never impose their religious-cultural beliefs on Americans who aren’t Jewish and they have been around since the early days of colonial America. Likewise, Muslims in America shouldn’t do the same nowadays and in the future.

We Americans love and adore dogs, and utilize some dogs to help people with disabilities, I think some Muslims, in time, should learn to love and adore dogs, too, without worrying about how “unclean” the dogs are. After all, we bathe and clean dogs sometimes or all the times.;)

UPDATE: This morning, I went to see someone for an appointment and I shared with her about this story of deaf-blind woman and service dog. She told me of the other reason why dogs and other certain animals are considered “unclean” to Muslims. Accordingly, it has to do with the lack of spirituality and holiness in these animals and dogs. I can understand the spiritual and scriptural reasons behind it, but that is still a bunch of superstitious bunks. All creatures in this world are the evolutionary byproducts of the natural environments they live and sustain on, they had to adapt to any environment to ensure its survival. To suggest these creatures lacking any divine holiness or spirituality endowed by God, according to certain religious beliefs, is based on lack of scientific understanding why these creatures, including dogs, are like that in certain environments and why they evolved or bred to improvise themselves that seem “unnatural” and “unholy” to certain peoples. We have to put up with centuries-old, superstitious religious-cultural beliefs, and ambiguous scriptural writings based on simple-minded observations, fears, tribal/pagan customs, irrationality, and bigotry. Unfortunately, you can find plenty of that in the Qu’ran, the Old Testaments of the Bible, other ancient holy books and teachings.

A person so decadent, perverted, full of religious bigotry, and malicious to others is a lot more “unclean” than just an “unclean” dog.

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