So this is going too far now.. anti-muslim sentiments are really on the inclined curve. And I think its all due to this Ground zero mosque discussion that the conservatives and media have ignited. Shame on them. And look who is paying the price.. a common cab driver who happens to be Afghani and Muslim!!
Wuts the use of such debate over which the muslims have to be the victims in the end!!
August 25, 2010, 12:34 pm
Man Is Held in Anti-Muslim Stabbing of Cabdriver
By KAREN ZRAICK AND ANDY NEWMAN
http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/25/cabbie-attacked/?hp
A cabdriver was attacked Tuesday by a knife-wielding passenger who made anti-Muslim remarks, the police said.
The passenger, Michael Enright, 21, of Brewster, N.Y., hailed the cab at Second Avenue and East 24th Street around 6 p.m. Tuesday, the police said. Twenty blocks north, they said, he slashed and stabbed the 43-year-old driver in his throat, face and arm.
The driver, identified by the New York Taxi Workers Alliance, a drivers’ group, as Ahmed H. Sharif, 43, stopped the cab and approached a police officer on Third Avenue near 42nd Street. Mr. Enright was arrested at the scene.
According to the taxi workers’ alliance, Mr. Sharif’s fare started the ride asking him in a friendly way if he was Muslim, whether he was observing Ramadan, and how long he had been in the United States.
After falling silent for a few minutes, the passenger began cursing and screaming, and then yelled, “Assalamu alaikum — consider this a checkpoint!” and slashed Mr. Sharif across the neck, and then on the face from his nose to his upper lip, the alliance said. (“Assalamu alaikum” — “peace be with you” — is a traditional Muslim greeting.)
Both men were taken to Bellevue Hospital Center. The driver was in stable condition. A law enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing, said Mr. Enright was “very drunk” at the time of the attack.
“I feel very sad,” Mr. Sharif said in a statement released by the taxi workers’ alliance. “I have been here more than 25 years. I have been driving a taxi more than 15 years. All my four kids were born here. I never feel this hopeless and insecure before.”
He added that “right now, the public sentiment is very serious” because of tensions over Park51, the proposed Islamic center that some critics call the “ground zero mosque.”
The police charged Mr. Enright with attempted murder as a hate crime, assault, aggravated harassment and criminal possession of a weapon. He was awaiting arraignment on Wednesday.
Update, 4:00 p.m. | The man charged with the anti-Muslim slashing and stabbing of a cab driver Tuesday is a volunteer with a nonprofit that works to promote cross-cultural understanding and is working on a film about Marines’ experiences in Afghanistan.
The trailer to Michael Enright’s student film “Home of the Brave.” Double-click to expand.
The man, Michael Enright, 21, volunteers for Intersections International, a group “dedicated to justice, reconciliation and peace across lines of faith, culture, ideology, race, class, national borders and other boundaries that divide humanity.”
The group, run by the Collegiate Churches of New York, would not immediately comment on Mr. Enright other than to confirm that he volunteered with the group’s “veteran-civilian dialogue program.”
“Intersections is on record, explicitly and consistently, as promoting interfaith dialogue and cross cultural cooperation, specifically with our Muslim brothers and sisters,” the group said in a statement. “We deplore violence and any act that may be categorized as a hate crime.”
Mr. Enright, who is also a student at the School of Visual Arts, recently traveled to Afghanistan for his senior thesis film about young American soldiers deployed there.
He told The Journal News in a March interview that he wanted to make the movie to show the perspective of young men like a childhood friend of his who was deployed. “I wanted to do him justice,” he said.
In the trailer for the film, a Marine tells Mr. Enright about how Sept. 11 made him want to enlist.
“I was in eighth grade social studies class,” the soldier says. “I remember seeing it. So I joined the Marine Corps to literally — we were the bad people in the world.”
