New Yorkers, including the city’s mayor, and several national US organizations, on Wednesday strongly condemned the attack of a taxi driver believed to have been targeted because he is a Muslim.
The attacker, a 21-year-old man who was reportedly drunk at the time of the incident, has been arrested and charged with attempted murder as a hate crime after he attacked Ahmed Sharif on Tuesday evening.
The man was 43-year-old Sharif’s first fare of the night, the Taxi Workers Alliance said in a statement. As the cab headed for Times Square, the passenger began a friendly conversation with Sharif about his religion, asking him if he was fasting in observance of the Muslim month of Ramadan.
After a few moments of silence, the man “suddenly started cursing and screaming,” the statement said.
“He yelled ‘Assalamu Alaikum. Consider this a checkpoint,’ and then slashed Mr Sharif across the neck. As Mr Sharif went to knock the knife out, the perpetrator, continuing to scream loudly, cut the taxi driver in the face [from nose to upper lip], arm and hand,” the alliance said.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he had spoken to Sharif and “assured him that ethnic or religious bias has no place in our city.”
“This attack runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe, no matter what God we may pray to,” Bloomberg said.
The Taxi Workers Alliance linked the attack on Sharif to the controversy surrounding plans for Islamic cultural center near in New York’s Ground Zero.
Meanwhile, three teenagers who admitted targeting Hispanics for violence were sentenced on Wednesday to seven-year prison terms for their roles in the 2008 killing of an Ecuadorean immigrant, and a fourth teen who had met the others on the night of the killing received a six-year sentence.
The killing focused the national debate over immigration on New York’s Suffolk County.
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