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Taxi Dashboard Norms

Faith finding its way onto the dashboard of taxi's in Cairo above, and Bangkok below.

During a recent field study in Cairo we encountered a taxi free from any religious adornments - quite the rarity in Egypt. But why? The driver was having his vehicle assessed for road-worthiness and officially taxis are supposed to be free of religious symbols. Faith is a hot and contenscious filled issue in Egypt these days. Once the test was passed he planned start personalising his car to become a mobile shrine.

Projections of faith strangly absent from the dashboard late night taxi into Delhi (above) though the he had an evil eye (Nazar Boncugu, eye bead) attached to his keyring. Tokyo dashboard, below limited to (a rather fetching) official taxi-driver identity card.

Writing from Tokyo | April 13, 2007 | Permalink