NYC mayor seeks calm after attack on Muslim cabdriver

August 27, 2010 at 12:00a.m.

Associated Press

NEW YORK

A Muslim cabdriver 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 still were 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 at the 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.”