Alleged anti-Muslim attacker works at pro-Park51 group i expect muck mark's OUTRAGE over this effrontery is imminent. -- The apparent anti-Muslim assault on a New York city cabbie by a man shouting “Assalamu Alaikum. Consider this a checkpoint" produced an immediate round of recriminations over its connection to opposition to a New York Islamic Center and an apparent rising tide of Islamophobia. But as often at the intersection of politics and violent crime, the story doesn't appear to fit any easy stereotype: The alleged assailant, Michael Enright, is — according to his Facebook profile and the website of the left-leaning media organization Intersections International — a student at the School of Visual Arts and a volunteer for Intersections, which recently produced a statement of support for the Park51 project and is funded by the mainstream, liberal Collegiate Church of New York. Intersections did not respond to two messages, and the group does not appear to be picking up the phone. Enright did not respond to a message through his Facebook account. But this appears to be the same man: Police described Enright as a resident of Brewster, 21 years old, and an employee of an "Internet media company who had recently spent time with a combat unit in Afghanistan filming military exercises until this past May." His Facebook picture, above, appears to show him in Afghanistan. The page describes him as a cinematographer and photographer for Intersections. Charles Johnson turns up a description of his work: Michael Enright, a student at the School of Visual Arts and volunteer for Intersections’ Veteran-Civilian Dialogue program, was featured in The Journal News. Enright is working on his thesis film project about war’s effects on the soul, which includes excerpts of the Veteran-Civilian Dialogue. Enright’s film follows his former classmate Cpl. Alex Eckner, and Eckner’s army unit through basic training in Hawaii, deployment to Afghanistan and their return home. The Village Voice first reported the connection.
portrait of a racist coffee-drinker. -- Rider Asks if Cabby Is Muslim, Then Stabs Him By N. R. KLEINFIELD It was the first fare of the cabdriver’s shift. A young man hailed him at the corner of Second Avenue and East 24th Street, wanting to go to 42nd and Second. It was 6 p.m. on Tuesday; the traffic was dense. Once the fare, Michael Enright, a 21-year-old film student who had been recently trailing Marines in Afghanistan, settled in the back, he started asking friendly enough questions: Where was the driver from? Was he Muslim? The driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, 44, said he was from Bangladesh, and yes he was Muslim. Mr. Enright said, “Salaam aleikum,” the Arabic greeting “Peace be upon you.” “How’s your Ramadan going?” Mr. Enright asked, Mr. Sharif said. He told him it was going fine. Then, he said, Mr. Enright began making fun of the rituals of Ramadan, and Mr. Sharif sensed this cab ride might not be like any other. “So I stopped talking to him,” Mr. Sharif said. “He stopped talking, too.” As the cab inched up Third Avenue and reached 39th Street, Mr. Sharif said in a phone interview, Mr. Enright suddenly began cursing at him and shouting “This is the checkpoint” and “I have to bring you down.” He said he told him he had to bring the king of Saudi Arabia to the checkpoint. “He was talking like he was a soldier,” Mr. Sharif said. He withdrew a Leatherman knife, Mr. Sharif said, and, reaching through the opening in the plastic divider, slashed Mr. Sharif’s throat. When Mr. Sharif turned, he said, Mr. Enright stabbed him in his face, on his arm and on his thumbs. Mr. Sharif said he told him: “I beg of you, don’t kill me. I worked so hard, I have a family.” He said Mr. Enright bolted out of the slowly moving cab. Mr. Sharif then found a police officer who apprehended Mr. Enright. The officer told him, Mr. Sharif said, that Mr. Enright said he had tried to rob him. Mr. Sharif received more than two dozen stitches at Bellevue Hospital Center and was released. Mr. Enright was given a psychiatric evaluation there. The Manhattan district attorney charged Mr. Enright with second-degree attempted murder as a hate crime, first-degree assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon. He was arraigned on Wednesday in Manhattan Criminal Court, appearing in cargo shorts and a polo shirt, and ordered held without bail. If convicted of the top charge, he would face up to 25 years in prison. “He’s terrified,” said Mr. Enright’s lawyer, Jason A. Martin. “He’s shocked at the allegations. He’s just trying to cope with it right now.” The violence that erupted during the cab ride came amid a heated and persisting national debate over whether to situate a Muslim community center and mosque two blocks north of ground zero. Upon learning of the attack on the cabdriver, some Muslim groups called for political and religious leaders to quiet tensions. Nihad Awad, national executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement: “As other American minorities have experienced, hate speech often leads to hate crimes. Sadly, we’ve seen how the deliberate public vilification of Islam can lead some individuals to violence against innocent people.” In a statement, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said, “This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe, no matter what God we may pray to.” He said he had spoken to Mr. Sharif and told him “ethnic or religious bias has no place in our city.” He invited him to come to see him at City Hall on Thursday. The arresting officers said Mr. Enright seemed to be drunk, the police said, and a city official briefed on the investigation said there was an empty bottle of Scotch in his backpack. The police did not do a Breathalyzer test. Mr. Sharif, however, said Mr. Enright did not appear inebriated to him. Mr. Sharif, who lives in Jamaica, Queens, with his wife and four children, came to the United States about 25 years ago and was a cook before becoming a cabdriver 15 years ago. He said nothing of this nature had happened to him before. Recently, some passengers asked him about the center planned near ground zero, he recalled, and he replied that he was against it, that there was no need to put it there. What is known about Mr. Enright presents a complicated picture. An only child, he lives with his mother in Brewster, N.Y., a middle-class suburb about 50 miles north of Manhattan. Neighbors said he was friendly enough and often skateboarded outside his house. He is a senior, studying film, at School of Visual Arts, on East 23rd Street, near where he hailed the cab. He was arrested in November on charges of criminal trespass and disorderly conduct. According to the police, he was picked up on Second Avenue between 49th and 50th Streets, where he was acting violently, banging on walls and ringing doorbells. There was also a warrant out for him at the time for another violation, though it was unclear on Wednesday what it was for. Mr. Enright had been working as an unpaid intern with an Internet media company called tvworldwide.com on a documentary that followed Bravo Company of the First Battalion, Third Marines, known as the Lava Dogs. An article in The Journal News in March said the film, “Home of the Brave,” was to be Mr. Enright’s senior thesis. The article said that in October, Mr. Enright spent time at Kaneohe Bay in Hawaii filming the Marines as they prepared for deployment to Afghanistan. In April and May, he spent five weeks embedded with them in Afghanistan, according to military officials in Afghanistan. One of the members of the regiment was a friend from Brewster High School, Cpl. Alex Eckner. In the article, Mr. Enright said that the experiences of Mr. Eckner led him to want to do the film. Mr. Enright is also a volunteer with Intersections International, an initiative of the Collegiate Churches of New York that promotes justice and faith across religions and cultures. The organization, which covered part of Mr. Enright’s travel expenses to Afghanistan, has been a staunch supporter of the Islamic center near ground zero. Mr. Enright volunteered with the group’s veteran-civilian dialogue project. Joseph Ward III, the director of communications for Intersections, said that if Mr. Enright had been involved in a hate crime, it ran “counter to everything Intersections stands for” and was shocking. Mr. Enright, according to the article in The Journal News, was also working as a landscaper at Four Winds Hospital, a psychiatric hospital in Katonah, N.Y. The older brother of Alex Eckner, Wesley Eckner, 27, said in an interview: “It’s crazy to hear this. It sounds completely out of character.” Wesley Eckner, who served three combat tours with the Marines in Iraq and Afghanistan and is now in college, said that Mr. Enright was “a jolly kid” who liked to “goof around.” Whereas the older Mr. Eckner liked to go with his brother to the gun range to fire vintage World War II rifles, he said, Mr. Enright gravitated to taking photographs and loved movies. During the time Mr. Enright was in Afghanistan, Mr. Eckner said, things had been quiet with the Marine unit, though it had come under plenty of fire before he arrived. Yet he recalled a curious call from Mr. Enright not long after he had returned from overseas. He asked Mr. Eckner how he was dealing with readjusting, leading Mr. Eckner to believe he was having some trouble. He found that odd, considering that Mr. Enright had been there for such a short period. He said Mr. Enright had never said anything to them that was anti-Muslim. Reporting was contributed by John Eligon, Ann Farmer, Michael M. Grynbaum, Andy Newman, Ray Rivera, D. Z. Stone and Karen Zraick.
there has never ever ever been, in the history of the world, someone that committed a crime that shocked their acquaintances.
Ummm, why not? This guy worked for an interfaith group, obviously had some mental issues and or changed his opinion, has he had a diary of anti-muslim hate propaganda with him when he was arrested, IIRC. After a month of relentless lies, propaganda and xenophobic bullsh-t from the right wing echoc hamber, propagated downward to mouthbreathing idiots from staten island who attack random puerto rican dudes on suspicion that they might be bin Laden, and professional online brown baiters such as yourself - this nutjob in a drunken stupor, snaps and starts slashing up some poor cab driver. Coincidence? Maybe? Causation? Also maybe. The fact that he previoiusly wasn't such a nutjob is really not relevant to the hysterical poisonous trash that you and the rest of the Fox-GOP Axis are peddling for fun - it is like saying "See, Tim McVeigh wasn't an anti-big government right wing terrorist after all, he SERVED IN THE US ARMY!!!!!" Fail. Try again next time, squatty.
This also challenges the stereotype that violent right-wing nutjobs are all disenfranchised illiterate southerners.
so, the cabbie does not support the mosque, and his attacker does. muck mark faints... btw, sam, is that you? <object width="853" height="505"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/MF_tL8m9e-c?fs=1&hl=en_US"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/MF_tL8m9e-c?fs=1&hl=en_US" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="853" height="505"></embed></object>
1) Let me see, if you're a muslim and just had your face slashed in by a random hate criminal, do you run around saying "go mosque go!"or would you be somewhat deterred? That's like saying "hey me and my boys firebombed a black church, and they moved away, so this proves the blacks so they no longer want civil rights, woohoo!" 2) Why don't you provide some evidence as to this guys support for the Cordoba center project? Let us weigh the evidence: Circumstance 1) this guy used to work for an interfaith organization. used to. Circumstance 2) He slashed a random brown person in the face, screaming anti muslim slogans, while carrying a diary full of antimuslim propaganda after spending time in afghanistan. I would think most people who don't want xenophobic morons like you to succeed in your little hate game in the Cordoba affair n probably don't have diaries filled with anti muslmpropaganda and slashin random brown people in the face. I know I sure don't. nerve strike noted. "Where does it come from?" My best guess is this act of yours is repression from being too much of a p***y to be the opinionated right wing ba barracus in front of your wife's Bryn Mawr Friends, AMIRITE? So you do it here? Is that why you also talk about doubleteaming, lactating, etc...we get to know the inner basso that can't come out in public? AMIRITE?
not sure how your argument applies to statements he made prior to the attack. per the racists at the times: Mr. Enright IS also a volunteer with Intersections International, an initiative of the Collegiate Churches of New York that promotes justice and faith across religions and cultures. The organization, which covered part of Mr. Enright’s travel expenses to Afghanistan, has been a staunch supporter of the Islamic center near ground zero.
I wonder how much this view could be shared among Muslims around the country (especially around NYC)? I wonder if he said that to avoid the hot button issue or if he actually believes it? The article doesn't indicate that he doesn't actually believe that, so he probably does think that way. Which I find interesting. Still, despite some Muslims finding the location to be unnecessary, there is a good amount of bigots out there protesting it for precisely the wrong reasons. To deny this would be willful ignorance.
oj once said he loved his wife. no WAY he could've killed her since he professed is love for her prior to slashing her throat.
basso loved his first wife's booty, therefore there is no WAY he could be drinking from the mammaries of another.
