Tel-Chai Nation: Muslim cab drivers block traffic at NY mosque

Here's a story from the UK Mail (via Galliawatch and Observitoire de l'Islamisation) that reeks of the same kind of contempt you'd see in some parts of France where they had street crowding prayer tactics:

With a sea of yellow stretching into the distance, it looks like the taxi queue at a busy airport.

But this picture was actually taken outside a Mosque during a prayer service - with 200 Muslim cabbies illegally parked.

Residents of the wealthy Upper West Side of Manhattan are outraged that their streets are being taken over multiple times each day for the 45-minute service.

The taxi drivers are double and triple parking in a huge line that forces traffic into the oncoming lane. [...]

Muslims have been parking illegally at the Islamic Cultural Centre for four years but the row has blown up because a road that connects to it that has been closed for the whole time has now reopened.

Prayers take place five times a day but the busiest is on Fridays at lunchtime when up to 300 worshippers - and 200 taxi drivers - are in attendance.

Most of the taxi drivers appear unrepentant with one claiming: 'I have to pray. I have no choice but to break the rules.'

Cabbie Abdoulaye Diallo, a 30-year-old immigrant from Guinea, told DNA info that he had got several $75 fines for parking illegally outside the mosque but he did not care.

He said: 'For me, my prayer is more important, because that's what I'm going to take with me the day I die'.

Residents however are increasingly anxious that they cannot cross the road safely.

'It's an accident waiting to happen, said James Beale, the resident manager at a Trump tower block that is next to the mosque.

'It's a very dangerous situation. It's like all the rules of the road are thrown aside,' he told DNA info.