Muslim irate over transgender driving instructor

Emma Sherdley (Daily Mail)

A Muslim man is threatening legal action against an all-female driving school in Britain after the company sent a transgendered man to teach his wife how to drive.

"You have sent me a man. Send me a proper female. How dare you send a man with a deep voice?" the unnamed customer told Joanne Dixon, who runs the Laugh 'n' Pass school in West Yorkshire.

According to the UK's Daily Mail, the instructor at the center of the dispute is Emma Sherdley, who up until a few years ago was known as Andrew Sherdley, a father of two children.

Sherdley is still in the process of changing genders and told the paper:

I always knew as a child that I was a woman stuck in a man's body. I tried hard to be a man, getting married and having children but it never worked and never would. For the past six years, I have been what is correctly called "transitioned." I still have to undergo final surgery but legally I am a woman. That is what my birth certificate says and that is what the gender recognition certificate proves. For that prejudiced and biased man to threaten to sue me and the driving school is totally and utterly wrong.

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The irate customer from the Meadowhall district of Sheffield claims the company deliberately sent a man disguised as a woman because of his Islamic faith.

Many Muslims believe an unmarried woman shouldn't be left alone with a man unless marriage is pending.

If already married, many believers say wives must never be left alone in the company of a man who's not her husband.

"His attitude and behavior was outrageous and has upset me and Emma and everyone else who works here," Dixon said.

Comments on the Daily Mail's messageboard seem to be taking the side of Sherdley and not the disgruntled customer:

• He should be sued himself for discrimination.

• For goodness' sake, grow up and leave this woman alone, she has the right to earn her living just like everyone else.

• He needs to leave his prejudices in the Middle Ages where they belong.