Republican National Committee Slashes New York Muslim Cabbie (A Very Angry Juan Cole)

[kpete]

Republican National Committee Slashes New York Muslim Cabbie
Posted on August 25, 2010 by Juan

It wasn’t the 21-year-old Michael Enright who drunkenly slashed his New York city cab driver after asking ‘Are you Muslim?’

It was the Republican National Committee. From August of 2006, the RNC decided to demonize Muslims and Islam as a campaign ploy, to scare apparently easily spooked white Christians. In recent weeks, Newt Gingrich sharpened the blade by comparing Muslims to Nazis. Gubernatorial candidate Rick Lazio asked if the Sunni Kuwaiti Sufi Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf, who is on a good will mission to the Muslim world on behalf of the US State Department and was deployed in the same way by George W. Bush, is a terrorist in the employ of Shiite Iran.

The slasher was apparently “very drunk,” but what does being drunk do to a person? Makes them suggestible, lets primal emotions come to the fore. Newt Gingrich and Rick Lazio may as well have kept Enwright in their basements in chains and whipped him into a frenzy as to spew their hatred on the airwaves.

.....................

I have said for some time that the American Right’s scapegoating of ordinary American Muslims– Muslims who serve in the US military, die for our country, invest in our cities, find cures for diseases, save our children’s lives in hospitals– would eventually cause pogroms and get people killed. A New York cabbie came close to dying for the sake of the G.O.P. Tuesday night.

Shame on you, Newt Gingrich, and Rick Lazio, and Sarah Palin, and all the other hatemongers. You have blood on your hands,and will have more if you go on this way.

more:
http://www.juancole.com/2010/08/republican-national-committee-slashes-new-york-muslim-cabbie.html

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[daleanime]

2. Maybe you could use ....

a chalkboard?:shrug:

[myrna minx]

3. .

:spray:

[golddigger]

4. Ouch!

:spray:

[The Northerner]

5. Huh? Some of the article comments posted claim that the stabber was a Dem or liberal

[emilyg]

6. I read that he worked for the Cordoba people.

[emilyg]

7. Correction

Michael Enright of Brewster, New York, who was booked on charges of attempted murder and assault with a weapon as a hate crime, is listed on Facebook as an employee of the New York City-based Intersections International, a "global initiative dedicated to promoting justice, reconciliation and peace across lines of faith, culture, ideology, race, class, national borders and other boundaries that divide humanity." And a few weeks ago, they announced their support for -- you guessed it -- the Cordoba House, better known to many as the "Ground Zero Mosque."

Just to recap, again, via the New York Daily News, Enright got

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/archives/2010/08/was_the_muslim.php