Teabagger attempts to kill Muslim in NYC

Posted by Greg Laden on August 25, 2010
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In addition to a serious neck wound, Ahmed H. Sharif suffered cuts to forearms, face and one hand while trying to fend off Enright, prosecutor James Zeleta said while arguing against bail.


Enright had asked Mr. Sharif if he was a Muslim, and when he responded in the affirmative, Enright yelled some Arabic words, and told him to “consider this a checkpoint” while he attacked him with a Leatherman or similar tool weapon.

Enright volunteered for Intersections International, a group that promotes interfaith dialogue and has supported a controversial proposed mosque near ground zero.

…

Sharif, a 43-year-old Bangladeshi immigrant who’s driven a cab for 15 years, was quoted in a news release from the New York Taxi Workers Alliance as saying the attack left him shaken.

“I feel very sad,” he said. With the tension over the mosque, he added, “All drivers should be more careful.”

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  1. #1 Jared
    August 25, 2010

    I am constantly amused by the claim that the teabagger bowel movement isn’t racist…

    “you one of those Muslims?”
    “yes”
    “now I can kill you”

    or:

    “¿habla español?”
    “si señor”
    “show me your papers!!”

    It would be funny if these people weren’t so damned trigger happy. I’m sure a few of them aren’t overtly racist, but for fuck’s sake, how can they pretend it isn’t a race issue?

  2. #2 denature
    August 25, 2010

    Support for headline?

  3. #3 Greg Laden
    August 25, 2010

    denature: read the post. What do you think a teabagger IS? See this for more if you must: Oh, wait, I haven’t posted it yet. Check back tomorrow for more teabagging morans.

  4. #4 Joshua Zelinsky
    August 25, 2010

    There’s no evidence this individual had any connection to the Tea Party. Indeed, anti-Muslim sentiment is at this point much more common than just among the Tea Party. The individual also apparently at one point worked for a multifaith peace group. See http://www.boingboing.net/2010/08/25/nyc-cabbie-slashed-a.html

  5. #5 gwen
    August 26, 2010

    Joshua, I have a bridge in Brooklyn I can sell you, cheap! It would take a bigger stretch of my imagination to see how they were NOT related!

  6. #6 djfav
    August 26, 2010

    Yeah, I’m sure the rally some of those dumbfucks had at ground zero the other day is totally unrelated to this event.

  7. #7 megan
    August 26, 2010

    Supposedly this guy was a MEMBER of an INTERFAITH group for DIALOGUE?? And this person violently attacks someone for being Muslim and Mr.Zelinsky has the gall to take that fake membership as proof it had no connection to ‘Tea Party’ like sentiment. Not nlike Beck trying to think he’s a civil rights promoter and pay for a membership to the NAACP. Who’s gonna believe that b.S.?

    I say let’s call them John Birchers or Klan members, it’s all the same core of insane unreasonable paranoia prejudice and hate. That is what allows true terrorists types to hide under being innocent bystanders because ignorant undiscerning bigots attack anyone/thing like a friggin antibody attacking the host body causing death. So then No One will be scrutinized or questioned when needed out of fear of stereotyping.

  8. #8 denature
    August 26, 2010

    I didn’t think a teabagger was someone who volunteered for an interfaith group that supported building the Islamic center.

    Since I hadn’t heard of any connection, I thought you may have had specific information other than a claim that a hate crime must be causally linked to the tea party. As presented, violent video games or hanging around soldiers are just as compelling, which is not very.

  9. #9 Paul Murray
    August 26, 2010

    “I thought you may have had specific information other than a claim that a hate crime must be causally linked to the tea party”

    I thought the “Tea Party” was no a political party per se, but more of a media beat-up? Their last rally attracted … what – three dozen or so?

  10. #10 Phil
    August 26, 2010

    Be fair. He doesn’t sound like a typical tea bagger. However the link between what he did and said and what Fox news and Beck are saying sounds more than coincidental.

  11. #11 Beaker
    August 26, 2010

    Where’s the evidence that he is a teabagger? It’s not in the article you linked to. Nor in any other article on the incident. I see no evidence that he was actually connected to this group.

  12. #12 Pinky
    August 26, 2010

    @ Megan #7

    I see your point, however when I first read the quoted parts of Greg’s lead in, the first thing I thought of was mob psychology. Group think changing a normally peaceful person into an enraged killer.

    Reading your comment, I changed my mind. My perception of the integrity of the Teabaggers makes it easy for me to imagine Enright could have joined the Interfaith group for tactical reasons.

    Greg, I am speculating the additional evidence for Teabagger moranitude is the carpenter who was almost torn apart Wednesday for the crime of “looking like a Muslim” during a Teabagger protest. The video I saw had news commentators repeatedly saying the man was not a Muslim; which is so much not the point. What, if he were a Muslim, would it have been appropriate for the mob protesters to tear him apart?

  13. #13 Piccamo
    August 26, 2010

    Maybe by “Interfaith” he thought it meant open to Methodist, Evangelist, Baptist, Lutheran, and maybe even Catholic or Orthodox Christianity. I imagine that Mr. Enright was shocked to find that the mosque in NYC was for Muslims! Aren’t they the guys who killed baby Jesus?!?

    In all seriousness though, it is odd that he would snap like this. I also find it odd that a senior in college would be a tea party member; I imagined their ranks as having an older membership.

  15. #15 cb
    August 26, 2010

    So this guy supported building the mosque. Wonder why, did the arabic guy he tried to kill did not? Either way I wonder when i’ll see the retractions of the jumping to conclusions.

  17. #17 Raging Bee
    August 26, 2010

    There’s no evidence this individual had any connection to the Tea Party.

    There’s no single unified Tea Party. It’s an amorphous, chaotic, infantile, undisciplined movement that pretends to reject leaders and hierarchy (while happily allowing themselves to be used by the Republican propaganda machine). Thus they get to pretend they’re a spontaneous grass-roots populist movement, while pretending they have no connection to their more embarrassing extremists. It’s a strategy they’re copying from the white-supremacists when the official KKK organization was sued out of existence. The white supremacists called it “leaderless resistance.” Just meditate a bit on that phrase and you’ll get an idea of how dangerous this sort of movement can get.

    So is there a connection between this thug and the teatards in general? Hell yes — they’re all responding in lockstep to the SAME orchestrated campaign of lies, fear and hatred. And they’re all doing it for the same reason: looking for a scapegoat to avoid facing a reality they can’t handle.

  18. #18 bobh
    August 26, 2010

    “Drunken Idiot Attempts to Kill Muslin in NYC”

    I despise the demagoguery against the mosque and I find self proclaimed teabaggers to be willfully ignorant but I’m sorry, saying Enright is a teabagger is a fail.

  19. #19 pelican
    August 26, 2010

    Certainly, intoxication is at play. Also, this perpetrator is the perfect age for a first psychotic break, which would explain some of the apparent contradictions between his past and current behavior.

    I don’t like the Teabaggers or anything they advocate. The only thing I can find at all amusing about them is that they have embraced as their chosen name, apparently without irony, a word that is also slang for a sexual act. I look forward to the day that someone (Dan Savage?) figures out how to incorporate this double entendre into public protests against them, in some gestural fashion that can be shown on national TV and easily replicated by anyone who sees Teabaggery, so the Teabaggers can be finally and completely mocked into the historical trash bin.

    That said, I very much doubt this perpetrator had anything to do with Teabaggery.

  20. #20 Greg Laden
    August 26, 2010

    He supports building the mosque? I don’t think so. He was a member of an organization that supported the mosque. That obviously drove him crazy and he became a teabagger.

    And why do teabaggers insist on trying to distance themselves from racists and crazy violent people, when racism, craziness, and violence is at the core of the teapbagger philosophy.

    I’m not quite sure what this “tea party” thing you’all are talking about is.

  21. #21 Stephanie Z
    August 26, 2010

    By the way, there is no mosque. It’s a community center.

  22. #22 Cliff Hendroval
    August 26, 2010

    Enright’s FB page showed him as being a fan of Greg Ball, a teabagger politician running for State Senate in New York.

    It has been scrubbed now, but earlier screengrabs can be seen at Talking Points Memo.

  23. #23 Chris Crawford
    August 26, 2010

    Compare and contrast two statements:

    “All terrorists are Muslims”

    “All bigots are teabaggers”

  24. #24 Just Sayin'
    August 26, 2010

    Check back tomorrow for more teabagging morans.

    Will that include Larry Moran?

  25. #25 Greg Laden
    August 26, 2010

    Chris: The fist one is stupid, the second one, you can take to the bank? Did I get it right?

    Yes, indeed, “teabagging” in the liberal blogosphere has become not too sublte dogwhistle for bigot. You caught us.

    Just Sayin’, you may have missed the literary reference, but maybe not.

    The coincidence is a bit painful because Larry is not a morOn, but it is even worse, because of the meaning of the word “Moran” in Maasai. But that’s how language works!

  26. #26 Beaker
    August 27, 2010

    “That obviously drove him crazy and he became a teabagger.”

    Again Greg, where is there any evidence that he was connected to the tea partiers?

    Just because teabaggers may be racist, doesn’t mean that all racist actions are executed by teabaggers. You’re just making stupid statements without any evidentiary basis at this point.

  27. #27 Greg Laden
    August 27, 2010

    Again, Beaker, I have said nothing about a political party called “tea”. I’m not even sure such a thing exists.

  28. #28 beaker
    August 28, 2010

    Don’t fool yourself, Greg. You say in your title: “teabagger attempts to kill muslim”. You know, as does everyone else, that people from the “tea party movement” as well as people outside that, call themselves teabaggers. And you have no indication that this guy was a part of that movement. None, zilch, nada.

    Yes, the guy may have been a bigot, or he may just have snapped for whatever reason. Fact is, we don’t know. Fact also is that being a bigot does not automatically make him a teabagger.

    May his actions be the outcome of the protests against the community center? Sure? Does that mean that he is necessarily part of the protestors or their movement? No.

  29. #29 pat
    September 2, 2010

    Teabaggers are so stupid that thye dont know or probably do know they are just being used as a tool to get the repubtards back in power and you can bet your last penny that 99% of the teabag mob are also the same peeps who voted for mac-palin and got so pissed off that a black man is now POTUS and that is why these kooks came out from under thier racist rocks and that they will not admitt to even though they are doing it in front of tv cams as that is how stupid they are, My best advise to the teabag old mob, keep doing what you are doing as its going to backfire right in your faces just like it did 2008, Smart peeps learn from past mistakes and that leaves the teabag mob out, I would also bet most of these teabaggers also watch fox news and stormfront.org on the net.

    Just look at teabag events, were are the blacks,litinos,chinese& japnese americans, if they are there you can count them on 2 hands and just to post it, yea i am a younger person and i am white anglo saxon too who has had enough of this hate shit from all these old fart white teabagger and i vote too and most young peeps fell the same way i do and they vote too, just take a poll from any highschool and you will find out that most kids diss you republicans & teabaggers and everything you stand for which is pure hate for anyone who does not confirm to your so called christian racist way of thinking as none of us want to go back to the way it was in the 1950,s and that will never happen so get that into your mindless brains, Now go to your old folk rest homes and bitch about it cuz you are not going to win,. Not now, not ever.