Muslim Cab Driver Stabbed by Passenger: Is This Really Happening?

The controversy over the mosque that’s not really at Ground Zero continues, and it seems that there are some people in the city who’ve taken the “difference of opinion” (i.e., outright religious intolerance) as an excuse to go around behaving like complete and total racist assholes. Which, lest you think differently, it is not. We are all people here, people.

Apparently, a city cab driver is in the hospital after picking up a 21-year-old man, Michael Enright (reportedly of Brewster, New York), at 24th Street and Second Avenue on Monday night. Enright asked him, “Are you Muslim?” When the driver said he was, the passenger slashed him in the throat, arm, and lip.

Note to racist assholes: You are also idiots. When you commit a crime in a cab, you are still in a cab. The driver wisely locked the passenger in the back of the car and called 9-1-1. He should have driven straight for a telephone pole, extricating himself at the last moment.

Seriously, what the fuck? There is no excuse for this, whatsoever. New Yorkers, you should be ashamed of yourselves. We are better than this. If you’re not, please move somewhere else.

Meanwhile, Mayor Bloomberg is standing strong while the majority of other politicians (Sheldon Silver being the latest) wuss out around him and pander to the Muslim-hating/fearing crowd.

Bloomberg, you, at least, are making us proud. From the New York Times:

Mr. Bloomberg, flanked by the center’s developer and the wife of its imam, said he understood the impulse to find a different location, in the hope of ending the controversy.

“But it won’t,” the mayor said. “The question will then become, ‘How big should the ‘no-mosque zone’ around the World Trade Center be?’ ”

He added: “There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it, too, be moved? This is a test of our commitment to American values. We must have the courage of our convictions. We must do what is right, not what is easy.”

Cab-riders and people of New York City in general (as well as any temporary visitors), please take that to heart.

[via NY1, NYT]