For whipping up anti-Muslim sentiment...


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.