For Muslim Taxi Drivers in New York, Ramadan Gets Complicated.

                Prayer in front of Ar-Rahman Mosque on 29th Street and Broadway in New York City.


For Muslim Taxi Drivers in New York, Ramadan Gets Complicated.(TAC).It's afternoon in downtown Manhattan, and Mohammad "Tipu" Sultan, a 34-year-old taxi driver from Bangladesh, stands by his car at a gas station on the corner of Houston and Broadway. It's one of the city's warmest summer days, and Sultan is carrying a plastic grocery bag filled with about a dozen water bottles. "I'm going to need these soon, after the last prayer, around eight, when I can break it," he says. Sultan is of course referring to the intensified prayer and sunrise-to-sundown fast followed by devout Muslims worldwide during the month of Ramadan, which began July 19 and ends Saturday night. Refueling his car before beginning his 12-hour shift, he points to an empty corner at the back of the station. "Look, they're starting," he says. A small group of drivers has parked and unrolled prayer mats. Giant billboards towering overhead, the air filled with incessant honking, and the sidewalk packed with camera-clad tourists, they kneel eastward, praying toward Mecca. "We have until 7:45 or so to make this prayer, the fourth of the day, so people are going to be coming in and out to pray," Sultan explains.
This gas station is just one of hundreds of formal and informal destinations, from mosques to the parking lot of Kennedy Airport, where New York City's Muslim taxi drivers gather to pray five times daily (six during the month of Ramadan).
Taj Khan, a Pakistani driver among the worshipers, says, "We work, but we stop, we pray." Another driver from Bangladesh, Akhtar Alam, seconds this. "I stop at whatever mosque falls on my route. I make it work with the system."But drivers also say they face additional challenges behind the wheel besides intensified prayer and hours of fasting. According to Bhairvai Desai, director of the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, the largest taxi union in the country, taxi drivers are 30 percent more likely to be attacked on the job than any other worker. And when mixed with heightened anti-Islam sentiment in America, the threat to Muslim drivers—who make up over 50 percent of the city's driving community—is even greater. "They see a turban or taqiyah"—the short, rounded cap worn by observant Muslim men—"or read our name, and they think terrorist, terrorist," Sultan says. "Ever since I started driving, in 2002, I always have those passengers who get out and say, 'Go back to your country!' or 'You're a terrorist.'"Hmmm.....Is the meter running while praying?Read the full story here.