27°NYC cabbie stabbing appears to be hate crime
Aug 27
2010
A Muslim cab driver whose face and throat were slashed in a suspected hate crime attack appeared with Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Thursday as city officials sought to ease tensions in the debate over a plan to put a mosque near the site of the 2001 terrorist attacks.
Meanwhile, investigators sought to unravel contradictions in the life of the suspect, a baby-faced college student who had traveled to Afghanistan with a group that seeks to promote interfaith understanding.
The Bangladeshi driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, said the proposed mosque and Islamic center north of the World Trade Center site did not come up in his conversation with the passenger accused of using a folding knife to slash his neck and face after asking whether he's a Muslim.
''Of course it was for my religion. He attacked me after he knew I was a Muslim,'' Sharif said at a news conference at City Hall.
Bloomberg said it is impossible to know the motive of the attack. But he made a pointed connection to the debate about the planned Islamic center, which has ignited intense emotions worldwide.
''This should never have happened and hopefully won't happen again,'' Bloomberg said. ''Hopefully, people will understand that we can have a discourse. That's what the First Amendment is all about. That's what America is all about.''
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly said authorities did not believe the cabbie's attack signified any trend in anti-Muslim crimes.
''We see it as an isolated incident,'' he said.
Passenger Michael Enright, of Brewster, N.Y., remained jailed without bail on charges of attempted murder and assault as hate crimes and weapons possession.
Sharif and one of his advocates at City Hall, the leader of a taxi drivers' labor group, said the conversation in the taxi turned from pleasant to disturbing as Enright began to make jokes about Ramadan.
Investigators were still trying to make sense of what they know about the 21-year-old visual arts student who once volunteered with a group called Intersections that promotes interfaith tolerance and has supported a proposal for the downtown mosque.
Robert Chase, Intersections' director, said the organization had helped pay to send Enright overseas to Afghanistan in April, a trip he took as part of a senior video project he was doing for school.
of Visual Arts. As part of the work, Enright spent time embedded with U.S. troops.
Chase said Enright did not appear tormented or different when he returned from Afghanistan, but said ''we knew he was witness to some really awful things over there.''
''We could tell that he'd had an intense experience, but he was the same Mike we knew,'' Chase said. ''He's always been professional, always been courteous, always been diligent.''
Authorities say Enright uttered ''Assalamu aleikum,'' Arabic for ''Peace be upon you,'' and told the driver, ''Consider this a checkpoint,'' before attacking him Tuesday night inside the yellow cab in Manhattan.
Enright was carrying two notebooks that contained details of his experiences in Afghanistan but did not appear to contain any anti-Muslim rants. The journals were in a backpack along with an empty bottle of scotch, Kelly said.
Enright told police he had been drinking since 2 p.m. Tuesday before his 6 p.m. arrest. He accused the arresting officers of violating his constitutional rights and falsely claimed to be Jewish, Kelly said.
Enright's attorney said at a court appearance Wednesday that Enright was an honors student, lived with his parents in the New York City suburbs and had volunteered in Afghanistan.
Sharif praised New York as a city where ''all color, races, all religion,'' live ''side by side peacefully.'' But he said the attack had made him feel unsafe and lonely. He said meeting with Bloomberg helped him feel more secure, and he welcomed the support from the city.
Supporters of the mosque -- a group that includes Bloomberg -- say it's a matter of religious freedom. Opponents argue that the site is too close to the place where Islamic terrorists attacked the World Trade Center site nine years ago.
Muslims have been worshipping at the Islamic center site since last year, but it received new attention after developers sought to move ahead on a planned expansion that includes a community center.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations, a Washington-based advocacy group, said anti-Islam sentiment has bubbled up with new fervor during the debate about the mosque, leading to more bias incidents nationwide.
In addition to the cab driver stabbing, a mosque in Madera, Calif., was vandalized, and anti-Muslim graffiti was discovered in the parking lot of a Texas Islamic center, the group said.
''Hate rhetoric often leads to hate crimes, and I think that's what we're seeing now,'' spokesman Ibrahim Hooper said.
Including the attack on Sharif, there have been 10 hate crimes reported against Muslims in the city so far this year, up from six total last year, Kelly said. By comparison, the top hate-crime categories this year are 93 anti-Semitic, 36 anti-gay and 23 anti-black incidents, according to the NYPD.
The anti-Muslim total is so low, ''I don't think you can draw any conclusions from these numbers,'' Kelly said.
The Anti-Defamation League said it had been tracking ''an intensified level of anti-Muslim bigotry'' in public forums over the past few months.
It cited scores of incidents involving either harassment, hate speech or outright violence, including a pipe bomb explosion at an Islamic center in Jacksonville, Fla., in May and a July fire at an Islamic center in Mareitta, Ga.
''The mood in the country, in general, is one of lack of civility and anger and rage,'' said ADL director Abraham Foxman. ''When you raise the rhetoric on hate, there is always potential for violence.''
The ADL itself opposes the construction of an Islamic community center near ground zero at the World Trade Center site, saying the location would unnecessarily agitate some 9/11 victims and families and would be ''counterproductive to the healing process.''
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11:58 AM
brutus smith says
bryan dubois must have been moderating yesterday.
11:40 AM
kURT says
Waht is wrong with facts Register? It is true that MANY from the south have rebel flags & still slam others based on skin colour. That's what is know as a bigot.
11:44 AM
kURT says
Moderators have removed this comment because it contained libelous or defamatory statements. Discussion Guidelines10:34 AM
brutus smith says
Moderators have removed this comment because it contained personal attacks. Discussion Guidelines09:48 PM
goofus says
You certainly won’t see this make any headlines in the state-run media.
According to the FBI there are more hate crimes against Caucasians than against Muslims in the United States.
McClatchy reported:
08:25 PM
Massengill Wins... says
Nazis were socialist? Really? Pretty sure they rounded up union leaders and put them in concentration camps. Granted they claimed they were socialists but after they rounded up the infirm, gays, and the jews.... they came after the union members. So if the nazis were really socialists...... why would they go after the unions? In todays terms the nazis were like the compassionate conservatives which we have found out that when the conservatives are in power they have no compassion for others.
05:31 PM
brutus smith says
sam a, read up on your history, the Nazts were Fascists. Fascism and Communism are direct opposites. Just like right and left.
I'm not sure how you blame Nagin since he was trapped also. I'm talking about after the levees collapsed. Coulda, shoulda, woulda beforehand, but because he was hollering for help? Repubs are always quick to blame the victim, shouldn't have stayed, shouldn't have lived there. Just like they blame the unemployed for not having a job. But when it comes to big money people, you can't get on your knees quick enough.
Repubs have nothing, nada, zilch.
05:18 PM
SamAdams says
Brutus: Please read complete comments before you respond, and think about them for a second. Let me repeat: I don't consider the aftermath of Katrina to be comparable to 9/11 because it wasn't an attack, nor was it some kind of random act of hatred. I didn't say that people didn't experience fear or that there weren't inexcusable problems. I never alleged property wasn't destroyed or people didn't die. But it wasn't the result of any kind of an attack, but rather government -- from top to bottom and back again -- incompetence (with a soupcon of a stunning lack of personal responsibility thrown in). Katrina itself was an act of NATURE to which we can attribute no malevolence whatsoever. That makes the BEGINNING of the Katrina disaster a whole lot different than 9/11 too.
05:12 PM
SamAdams says
Brutus: Oops, wrong again! The Nazis were socialists. Better read up on your history!
04:19 PM
6079 Smith W says
@ SamAdams:
People who live in rural areas cannot fully comprehend what it was like to have lived in a major American city on that day.
01:23 PM
brutus smith says
Since you readily associate left as being Communist, then we can readily associate right wing Conservative Republicans as being Nazis.
Repubs have nothing, nada, zilch.
01:11 PM
brutus smith says
Maybe you should watch the video again about the days after Katrina. They are playing them this weekend on the weather channel. Tell me you don't see fear in those people's eyes. I not talking about the blame game right now, just the fact that these people were left there with no help in sight. And if 9/11 put fear in you then the terrorists won. Why are we fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq? It should have brought anger that our Gov let it happen. Not fear.
12:56 PM
SamAdams says
6079 Smith W: I can't argue that 9/11 victims' families -- along with those of lots of plane crash victims and the like -- oftentimes receive compensation the families of other kinds of victims (garden variety murders or assaults, for example) don't get. But I don't think that has any bearing on the level of fear or grief generated among the general public at the time of the disaster itself. If anything, it ends up MINIMIZING fear, grief, guilt, whatever as it inspires a twisted kind of jealousy instead.
12:51 PM
SamAdams says
Brutus, Lee Harvey Oswald was well known and documented to have traveled to the Soviet Union where he lived for some months while he attempted to ingratiate himself with the Communist Party leadership. He also tried to go to Cuba with less success. It doesn't get a whole lot more "left" than Communism!
Oswald was very much a misfit and an incompetent on a whole lot of levels (like most "true believer" Communists, he had some real self esteem issues). Meantime, while I'm not at your level of conspiracy theorism where the Kennedy assassination is concerned, I'll go one step in that direction with you: I don't believe for a moment that Oswald acted alone.
12:46 PM
SamAdams says
Brutus, no, I didn't think the government's indept handling of the aftermath of Katrina was an attack on all of us. I think it was a prime example -- from the local to the state to the federal -- of how government is inefficient, inept, politically influenced, and all too often entirely unequal to the task. It has the resources; it MAY even have the WILL. But it rarely has the lean, mean, EXPERIENCED infrastructure to use those things. Worse, those at the top are almost always politicians, and those with any job history beforehand are all too often lawyers! Too bad more entrepeneurs, engineers, admirals, and accountants don't get elected.
I was never a fan of Rudy Giuliani (after some of his neighborhood lockdowns in the name of "crime prevention," I used to refer to him as Rudolph: New York's answer to Adolf!), but he was a real star when it came to dealing with the aftermath of 9/11. He didn't just have access to resources. He mobilized and deployed them effectively (in my own opinion, it seems that was the result of him letting the experts do their jobs and not micromanaging them on a day-to-day basis). That he (at least for a little while) also behaved as an exemplary statesman was just kind of icing on the cake.
Speaking of Katrina, interesting that Brown (the infamous "you're doing a great job, Brownie" head of FEMA at the time) says he WARNED his higher-ups that Katrina could be very, very bad, and nobody would listen let alone take any preparatory action. And don't even get me started on how incredibly moronic former New Orleans Mayor Nagin was...! Yep, Katrina was a failure of GOVERNMENT as much as a failure of levees.
Was it a disaster? Sure. But attacks require intent, and I'm not quite ready to attribute intelligence to hurricanes. And I'm SURE as heck not going to attribute any intelligence to government!
11:13 AM
brutus smith says
Ahhhhh, to funny. Glenn Beck is a Progressive after all. He got all you teatards to jump on his train, and he is a Progressive. ROFLMAO! Tears coming from eyes.
Repubs have nothing, nada, zilch.
10:32 AM
kURT says
Moderators have removed this comment because it contained personal information and personal attacks. Discussion Guidelines10:02 AM
brutus smith says
sam a, did you think the handling of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina was an attack on all of us?
Repubs have nothing, nada, zilch.
09:55 AM
brutus smith says
Where is your proof LHO was a "lefty"?
Repubs have nothing, nada, zilch.
09:35 AM
6079 Smith W says
@ Sam Adams:
Remember: If you’re going to be killed or injured – make sure it’s a national tragedy or that the person is wealthy or well insured.
09:08 AM
6079 Smith W says
I read a number of years ago that U.S. tax dollars were helping to fund the re-building of a mosque in Cairo, Egypt. I did not hear one serious peep out of the news media.
So now, news in increasingly coming out that we are and have been helping to re-build numerous mosques all around the world:
www.washingtontimes.com/news/2010/aug/10/tax-dollars-to-build-mosques/
Ah what the heck.
Since we’re helping Muslims build their houses of worship around the world, don’t you think that hard working American taxpayers’ dollars along with borrowed Chinese money might as well go to our friend the Imam for the building of his NYC mosque/cultural center?
Isn't it time to end the silly Constitutional separation of mosque and State within the borders?
Just watch as right-wing nuts try to make this wonderful Muslim worldwide outreach program into something vile!
Do you think that Mr. Obama might increase the funding so that the Muslim world will love the U.S. even more?09:13 AM
6079 Smith W says
bs writes:
“Oswald was hired by the CIA,”
Thanks for taking the bait. Where’s your “proof”?
08:31 AM
dorothy gale says
This is a MORAL issue, not a political issue. Does anyone else see any similarities between these anti-Muslim crimes and the bombing of black churches and synagogues in the South years ago? Yes, I understand that the events of 9-11 were a direct result of a belief in radical Islam, but weren't the actions of the KKK "justified" by a twisted version of Christianity? I, too, question the motives of the push to have this community center built so close to the site of such a terrible tragedy, and I'm not sure what is "right" in this case. But what have we become? Seems like this is turning into another witch hunt. Aren't we, as Americans, supposed to be better than that? I agree with SamAdams that every assault is a hate crime in some way, but I'd also like to add that FEAR is a prime motivator as well. Fear-mongering is everywhere; it is in our government (BOTH parties), our religions, our schools, our news media, our homes, and it is turning us into a nation of violent, hateful, divisive morons who will strike out at anyone and anything that doesn't fit into whatever narrow little idea we have of what a "real" American is or SHOULD be. What is happening to us?
08:31 AM
SamAdams says
Brutus, please re-read my comments. I said that, to those who actually lose a loved one to a violent crime, there's NO difference. Their loss is still just as significant to them. But to the population as a WHOLE, there's a GARGANTUAN difference between a murder somewhere and the MASS murder in the Twin Towers. Why do you think most of us don't get all weepy over a fatal car crash in San Diego (assuming we even hear about it), but will pause a moment when we hear of a plane crash that kills a couple hundred in one fell swoop?
It's not simply about motive, but about scale.Terrorists wouldn't be as successful in their mission as they are if they snuck around in the dead of night and offed one person at a time, and they know it. I'm never glad when I hear someone I don't know has been killed, but I don't take it personally. But 9/11? That was REAL personal, even for those of us who didn't know a soul who died that terrible day. It was, in effect, an assault on ALL of us. It was meant to be.
07:53 AM
gene44870 says
protect and serve , thats the police dept monto and has been sense i can remember. and this guy here just got a little bit of both , Just stop and think about it a minute
They protected him from himselves and served the public at large , so what more can you ask for , maybe less then the guy wanted , but then well lets just say , you have to watch what you ask for cause you may just get more then you bargened for
Good job Perkins , that was good looking out , you just may have save a life or even lives , you did you uniform proud
07:25 AM
brutus smith says
Bush was a high ranking official not Director at the time.
07:08 AM
brutus smith says
Oswald was hired by the CIA, and the head at the time? George Herbert Walker Bush. How many people didn't know where they were at that day? George H.W. Bush didn't.
06:15 AM
6079 Smith W says
Remember: Lee Harvey Oswald was a left-winger.
Didja hear the rumor that perhaps the cabbie was a suicide "victim," who was sacrificing himself for propaganda purposes?
9-11? brutus smith believes that it was an inside job by the Bush Administration - ask him.
06:05 AM
brutus smith says
Are you serious sam a? Tell a parent whose daughter is raped and murdered that her death wasn't as terrorizing as those of 9/11. Unbelievable!
Repubs have nothing, nada, zilch.
Unbelievable.
10:10 PM
SamAdams says
Oops, Brutus, one other thing: I don't watch Fox News. (In fairness to Fox, I don't watch CNN, either.) The news story I heard this morning was <ahem> featured on NBC's Today Show. In the event you're not a fan, the show's not exactly known for its right wing slant...
10:09 PM
SamAdams says
Brutus, I disagree STRONGLY with your comment that a death on 9/11 is no different from a death in the street. While it's certainly no different to the friends and families who have lost someone near and dear to them, the terror inspired by a random mass attack is quite a bit different even from the fear generated by a serial killer, and certainly an order of magnitude greater than knowing someone somewhere in town was gunned down on a street corner the other day.
There's one other difference: Most murderers are, indeed, whack jobs. Terrorists give a whole new meaning to the word in-freaking-sane! Many murderers who kill outside a momentary rage know that they're doing wrong; others are proud of themselves. Both, however, commit their crimes for themselves. They just can't help themselves (or so they apparently are convinced). But terrorists? They PLAN. They're ORGANIZED en mass. And they actively aim for MAXIMUM casualities. Comparing a street assault to a 9/11 hijacker is like comparing a drunk driver to Adolf Hitler. Yeah, they're both dangerous, but seriously, would you put them even CLOSE to each other on the scale that measures bad guys?
09:08 PM
ottonut44 says
Wouldn't have happened if the cabbie hadn't given up his job at Seven Eleven.
02:08 PM
brutus smith says
I am sure it is all over Faux news. After all they have no agenda. Your right, he is a bad guy, a mentally whacked bad guy. They only label them as hate crimes to up the sentence. And I have said all along that a death from 9/11 is no different than a death on the street. Same thing with an assault. So I agree about the no less of a victim thing.
01:57 PM
SamAdams says
Brutus, the political leanings of the attacker have been all over the media since last night. The most recent I heard was this morning on the national news. It should be noted, by the way, that I don't either blame or excuse politics for such acts.
My issue is really with the label in ANY case. In its own way, EVERY assault is a "hate crime." To suggest a white Christian man whose throat was slashed is somehow a lesser victim than another based on the color of his skin or the nature of his religion is appalling. I don't really care WHAT the bad guy's motives are. He's a bad guy regardless.
12:48 PM
Outside lookin in says
Remember, Bloomberg shouldn't even be the New York City Mayor. He changed the City Constitution so that he could run a third time. He only follows the Constitutions (state & Federal) when its politically adventagious to his left wing radical views. He wants the over 100 million dollars the Mosque would spend to build the monument in NY city. It's about money!
12:42 PM
brutus smith says
Actually it's Reagan's fault for defunding the mental hospitals in the 80's. That is where this guy belongs.
11:07 AM
Perkins2060 says
This has to be George Bush's fault!
09:12 AM
brutus smith says
So sam a, how did you determine he was a "lefty"? It is an ongoing investigation.
Repubs have nothing, nada, zilch.
08:54 AM
SamAdams says
Turns out a leftie did it. Bummer, eh? Anybody want to bet this is no longer considered a "hate crime" in light of that oh, so inconvenient fact?