Source: Qantara.de
Selim Reid set up Germany’s first Muslim car sharing service to spare his mother disparaging remarks and to reduce the number of extra-marital affairs. Cigdem Akyol spoke to the entrepreneur about his concept and his motivation
Mr Reid, you set up a Muslim car sharing service last December. Where did you get the idea for “Muslim-Taxi”?
Selim Reid: Many Muslim sisters and brothers were complaining that they weren’t able to use conventional car sharing services on their own because the gender separation required by Islam is not maintained by such services. After hearing more and more sisters and brothers bemoan this state of affairs, I came up with the idea for “Muslim-Taxi”.
So you were motivated purely by love and concern for your fellow Muslims?
Reid: I was also motivated by a very personal experience. I once organised a lift for my parents, who were travelling from Hamburg to Berlin. When people hear me speak, they can’t tell that I am an immigrant. When I brought my parents to the pick-up place, I saw the ice-cold expression in the faces of the driver and the other fellow passenger. It was absolutely clear that they didn’t like foreigners. During the trip, they began to talk disparagingly about foreigners in general and about my mother’s headscarf in particular. Of course, my parents couldn’t get out of the car in the middle of the motorway, so they were forced to listen to all of this. They assumed that my parents were not able to speak German, but they were wrong.
You are talking about discrimination and are critical of the ignorance of majority society. But by setting up a car sharing service for Muslims, are you not fostering the very segregation that has given rise to this ignorance?
Reid: We are not doing anything that Christian Church communities who support each other wouldn’t do. Moreover, the car sharing organised by our service is also open to non-Muslims too. So, if anyone is looking for dialogue, they will find it with “Muslim-Taxi”.
This is nice.