 Ahmed H. Sharif , 43, of Queens, NY |
NEW YORK — A Manhattan cabbie who was stabbed Tuesday night by a Putnam County man questioned Wednesday whether the attack stemmed from the contentious debate over creating a mosque near ground zero.
Ahmed H. Sharif, 43, of Queens, was stabbed several times by Michael Enright, 21, of Southeast, N.Y., after Enright had asked Sharif if he was Muslim and the cabbie responded that he was, a police spokesman said.
When officers responded to the scene around 6:15 p.m. Tuesday, Sharif was outside the vehicle, suffering from stab wounds, after attempting to lock Enright inside the cab, a police spokesman said. Enright escaped but was captured nearby by police.
The charges against Enright include attempted murder as a hate crime.
In a statement Wednesday the from New York Taxi Workers Alliance, Sharif warned his fellow cabbies.
“Right now the public sentiment is very serious” because of the ground zero mosque debate, he said. “All drivers should be more careful.”
Sharif, who was treated at Bellevue Hospital for stab wounds to his arms, throat and face, said the incident made him sad.
“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 said.
It was Sharif’s first fare of his shift.
 Michael Enright, 21, is charged with felony attempted murder as a hate crime after slashing a Muslim cabbie. |
Enright, a 2007 graduate of Brewster High School and an aspiring filmmaker, recently returned from Afghanistan, where he filmed Marines as part of a project for the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan, where he is a student. In Afghanistan, he was embedded with a Marines Corps crew that included his fellow Brewster High graduate, Cpl. Alex Eckner.
Enright was highly intoxicated when he hailed the cab, the police spokesman said. Once inside the cab, Enright asked Sharif whether Sharif was Muslim. When Sharif responded yes, Enright stabbed him several times with some type of utility knife.
According to the statement from the Taxi Workers Alliance, Enright’s conversation with Sharif started out friendly, with Enright asking the cabbie where he was from, how long he had been in America, if he was Muslim and if he was observing Ramadan.
Enright then went silent before suddenly cursing and screaming, the statement said.
He then shouted “‘Assalamu Alaikum,’ common among Muslims as a wish for peace, before pulling out the knife and slashing Sharif across the neck and stabbing several more times as Sharif tried to knock it out of Enright’s hands, the alliance said.
Enright was charged with attempted second-degree murder as a hate crime, first-degree assault, felonies, aggravated harassment and fourth-degree criminal possession of a weapon, misdemeanors. He is awaiting arraignment.
Enright also worked with Intersections International, a Manhattan-based, multifaith and multicultural effort that seeks to promote justice and peace. Messages left with the School of Visual Arts and Intersections International were not immediately returned.
How tragic…both for the poor cab driver and for the ignorant kid who assaulted him. I am araid there will be more of this type of thing as islamaphoebia seems to be on the rise (this thru ignorance and the media)
how can this be tragic to the guy who stabed the taxi driver. this taxi driver is working just to support his four childern. this explains how us musluims arre still mistreated by calling us terriosts. allah didnt want this musluim driver to die . inshallah he lives and see his childern grow .i have uncles who works as limodrivers and god forbids something like that happens to any of my family i would not rest until justice is served.
With all due respect, Anita, I have to agree with Maysaa here. I have no sympathy for the attacker at all. He is 21, an adult. He’d just come back from filming Marines in Afghanistan. He was drunk. But drunkenness is no excuse at all. Lots of people drink, but they don’t attack ramdom people.
This whole thing really gets to me. One.. this whole thing with the masjid being built in NYC and everything.. it’s all based on the mistaken belief that Islam = terrorism. No one is seeing that though. It’s an assumption that people have and are not even aware that they have. I’d like to see everyone back up for a minute. The masjid is only an issue with people because of that assumption, which shows how Islamophobic mainstream people have gotten.
It reminds me of WW2 Europe with the Jews. It started with propaganda. Pretty soon Germans everywhere bought into the theory that Jews were evil and were out to destroy Germany’s people by thinning the German genepool. Soon Kristalnacht happened and no one thought twice about it. It went downhill from there, we all know the history. The same thing is happening now, here, with Muslims.
Today I walked into a conversation between two people – one I knew who is supposed to be this very liberal democrat. It was about the masjid issue. I stopped a minute and asked if they realized that the masjid is NOT going to be built on ground zero – please go see the video here, they also have the transcript: http://www.truth-out.org/keith-olbermann-there-no-ground-zero-mosque62376 It’s quite an eye-opener! He has a lot of other good things to say, too. He says everything that I wanted to say, but better. I will also post it.
In any case, as I said.. I don’t have any sympathy for the attacker. If he was Muslim and the cabdriver was anything at all – say Christian, or worse, Jewish – this would be huge. It would lead to many many arrests – anyone who knew him, relatives, whatever. That’s what they do.. they arrest relatives, too, often wives.
But this guy isn’t in a CMU or isolation .. he probably won’t get more than five years if he gets that. More likely he’ll be ruled insane and get maybe 6 months in a mental hospital and then be out to do it again. By that time no one will blink an eye – because it’s getting worse and worse every day.