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Thursday, August 26, 2010

Man bites dog












The NY Post featured the picture and headline above, in an article about a knifing in New York on Tuesday night. The first few paragraphs:



A crazed film student who recently embedded with Marines in Afghanistan is accused of a drunken, hate-fueled attack on a Muslim cabby in Midtown -- further heightening tensions in a city already gripped by the Ground Zero mosque controversy.

Michael Enright, 21, of upstate Brewster, asked his victim if he was a Muslim and exchanged pleasantries in Arabic before going berserk and slashing the driver's neck and face through the taxi's partition, police said.

He has been charged with attempted murder as a hate crime for the attack, in which he allegedly shouted, "This is a checkpoint, motherf- - -ker! I have to put you down!"

"Before yesterday, I never felt like I didn't belong here," Bangladeshi native Ahmed Sharif said.
He added that anger over the proposed Park Place mosque may have played a role in the terrifying attack.

"I know many people are upset. I didn't support the mosque at Ground Zero either."


What made this case stranger was that Enright had reportedly been working with a group which supported the building of the mosque.

But what made the case really shocking was that it was the guy on the left who knifed the guy on the right. Had you had a picture of these two men standing side by side before the attack, and asked 100 New Yorkers to guess which of the men knifed the other on a city street, it would be surprising if fewer than 99 guessed Sharif.

Enright doesn't exactly fit the image of a thug. In the picture on the right, taken in Afghanistan, he looks more like a wholesome, pleasant lesbian trying to promote cross-cultural understanding.

But who knows what lurks in the hearts of men. My guess is that while working to support the mosque, some of the Muslims he was working with dissed him. (Enright doesn't look as if he could grow a beard if he wanted to.)

In any case, I wouldn't want to be Enright when it's time for the Muslim bruthas at Rikers to greet him.

Not that he doesn't deserve whatever's coming.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What an odd story. Sadly very unhelpful given how het up everyone seems to be getting about the mosque. (Gingrich, the politicos and the talking heads couldn't be any more unhelpful on this one - the only guy I've seen on TV talking about it in a way I appreciated was a young Catholic priest on Megyn Kelly's show.)

(BTW, my own thoughts on the mosque issue are along the lines of "You may have a right to do something, but that doesn't make it right to do it" but I'd rather it be resolved at a local level without people (like me) at a distance weighing in and inflaming an already highly sensitive situation.)

I expect we haven't heard the whole story. I get the impression that the guy is genuinely crazy and had some sort of flashback derived from his Afghan experience.
G

John Craig said...

Guy --
I think you're right, he's unhinged somehow. Though the left will undoubtedly try to paint him as just another typical Tea Partier.

I agree with the people who say it's fine if they build the mosque just so long as we're allowed to build a synagogue and Catholic church right next to Mecca.

Anonymous said...

As far as sensitivity is concerned, my critique of the Islamic community who choose to live in the West, most as law-abiding citizens (and this applies equally in other countries like the UK), is that they have completely failed to respond to islamic fundamentalist terrorism with the unqualified condemnation it deserves - leading the rest of us to wonder quite rightly where their loyalties lie.
G

John Craig said...

Guy -- Well said.