A few rugs and a cap are scattered on the floor. Across the hall, a taxi driver is washing his hands and forearms in the janitor's closet mop sink.

In an hour and a half, the room will be jammed with as many as eight men, kneeling on the rugs and chanting. In ski season, the overflow spills into the hall, demand so high that prayers are staggered. For now, it's quiet.

Here in this government industrial building circa 1980, between the vending machines and the women's restroom, Salt Lake City's Islamic taxi drivers have created a prayer room.

It used to be a lounge. The non-Muslim drivers call it a mosque. The city calls it a "meditation" or break room. I'm going to call it potentially unconstitutional.

"It's a big balance between operational and safety issues, and religious rights," says Barbara Gann, airport spokeswoman.

Salt Lake City's quandary is not unique. Last month, Indianapolis International Airport's plans to install floor-level foot-washing sinks in a taxi staging area fueled protests. More than a year ago, Kansas City managers expanded the airport's taxi station, adding a restroom with foot basins.

In this post-9/11, War on Terror world, foot baths and prayer rugs are politically charged. With all the political backwash tagged to Islam, well-meaning attempts to adjust to a new stream of immigrants can take on a sinister cast.

Anyone who rides in a taxi in middle America has noticed the demographic shift. Unlike New York, Chicago and Los Angeles, where a day of hailing cabs was a plunge into polyglotism, Salt Lake City cab riders usually found a blue-collar Anglo-Saxon in the driver's seat. But recently, they've been replaced by immigrants from Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Somalia, Senegal. Many, if not most of them, are Muslim.

And Islam is a rigorous faith, demanding several rounds of washing and praying at set times each day, fasting, and, depending on the interpretation, veils for women. Before, Utah's Muslim taxi drivers used to pray on the grass parking strip between lanes of traffic. There are two mosques within miles of the airport - in West Valley City and on 700 East. But this is quicker, more convenient. This nondescript little room obviously makes being different in this city a little easier.

The bleeding heart in me loves the implications of a prayer room - America's open-door policy of taking in refugees from other places, the growing diversity of Salt Lake City, the religious tolerance at play.

Because of their sheer numbers, Muslim drivers feel an understandable, if misguided, sense of ownership of the place. One cabby who tried to charge a cell phone in the meditation room complained of being harassed. He says the chairs and tables that used to be there are long gone. And last year, a Christmas tree was summarily unplugged and shoved into a corner between the vending machines, its star broken. Religious tolerance, it seems, doesn't go both ways.

"When I started, 365 days a year, I was working at an airport. Now, the whole building has turned into a religious shrine. I'm working in a mosque," says the veteran driver, who asked to remain nameless for fear of retribution. "If I wanted to do that, I could move to Iran. It starts to feel like a hostile work environment."

Beyond the cultural conflict the room has created among drivers, it also poses a legal question for the city. Foot-washing sinks are one thing; exclusive space to worship is another. There is no cross, no star of David anywhere in the building.

In this case, two clauses in the Constitution are in conflict: free speech and separation of church and state. Schoolchildren can spontaneously stop and pray in schools; convicts do the same in prisons. And public hospitals provide nondenominational chapels. Stopping the prayers would trample the drivers' right to exercise their faith.

At the same time, government is prohibited from showing preference for one religion over another, or, for that matter, faith over atheism. Salt Lake City probably never intended to establish a mosque in a public building. Whether through benign neglect or passive political correctness, one has developed. The transportation building has turned into an all-purpose, government-sanctioned Islamic center.

American Civil Liberties Union of Utah Director Karen McCreary says the city has to be even-handed and inclusive.

"It seems more about human relations than the Constitution, less about religion and more about mutual respect," adds Dani Eyer, a former ACLU of Utah director who is teaching a constitutional law class at the University of Utah.

And it's probably up to the city to give a difficult lesson in civics to America's newest immigrants.

walsh@sltrib.com