RIDER ASKS IF CABBY IS MUSLIM, THEN STABS HIM
It was the first fare of the cabdriver’s shift. A young man hailed him at the corner of Second Avenue and East 24th Street, wanting to go to 42nd and Second. It was 6 p.m. on Tuesday; the traffic was dense.
Once the fare, Michael Enright, a 21-year-old film student who had been recently trailing Marines in Afghanistan, settled in the back, he started asking friendly enough questions: Where was the driver from? Was he Muslim?
The driver, Ahmed H. Sharif, 44, said he was from Bangladesh, and yes he was Muslim.
Mr. Enright said, “Salaam aleikum,” the Arabic greeting “Peace be upon you.”
“How’s your Ramadan going?” Mr. Enright asked, Mr. Sharif said.
He told him it was going fine. Then, he said, Mr. Enright began making fun of the rituals of Ramadan, and Mr. Sharif sensed this cab ride might not be like any other.
“So I stopped talking to him,” Mr. Sharif said. “He stopped talking, too.”
As the cab inched up Third Avenue and reached 39th Street, Mr. Sharif said in a phone interview, Mr. Enright suddenly began cursing at him and shouting “This is the checkpoint” and “I have to bring you down.” He said he told him he had to bring the king of Saudi Arabia to the checkpoint.
“He was talking like he was a soldier,” Mr. Sharif said.
He withdrew a Leatherman knife, Mr. Sharif said, and, reaching through the opening in the plastic divider, slashed Mr. Sharif’s throat. When Mr. Sharif turned, he said, Mr. Enright stabbed him in his face, on his arm and on his thumbs.
Mr. Sharif said he told him: “I beg of you, don’t kill me. I worked so hard, I have a family.”
'DRUNK' DESECRATION AT MOSQUE
A drunk barged into a Queens mosque last night and shouted anti-Muslim slurs as he urinated on prayer rugs, cops and witnesses said.
Evening prayers were disrupted at the Iman Mosque on Steinway Street in Astoria when the unhinged man "came in with a beer bottle in his hands, clearly very intoxicated," said Mustapha Sadouki, who was attending services.
"He fumbled over to our rugs where people were praying" and then committed the despicable desecration, Sadouki said,
The man, identified by cops as Omar Rivera, also allegedly shouted slurs, calling the worshippers "terrorists."
Two men managed to subdue him. They put him a back room and called 911.
Cops took him to a hospital and later charged him with criminal trespass.
"He stuck up his middle finger and cursed at everyone," said Sadouki, 43.
"No one can pray now because the rugs are completely soiled. It was disgusting.
"He calls us terrorists, yet he comes into our mosque and terrorizes other people.
"This is a true hate crime."
GENERAL DAVID PETRAEUS' COIN STRATEGY said:
1-19 The contemporary environment also features a new kind of globalized insurgency, represented by Al Qaeda, which seeks to transform the Islamic world and reorder its relationship with the rest of the globe. Such groups feed on local grievances, integrate them into broader ideologies, and link disparate conflicts through globalized communications, finances, and technology. While the scale of the effort is new, the grievances and methods that sustain it are not. As in other insurgencies, terrorism, subversion, propaganda, and open warfare are its tools. But defeating such an enemy requires a similarly globalized response to deal with the array of linked resources and conflicts that sustain it.
...
UNITY OF EFFORT IS ESSENTIAL
1-98. Unity of effort must pervade every echelon. Otherwise, well-intentioned but uncoordinated actions can cancel each other out or provide a competent insurgent many vulnerabilities to exploit. Ideally a counterinsurgent should have authority over all government agencies involved in operations. However, the best situation that military commanders can generally hope for is to be able to achieve unity of effort through communication and liaison with those responsible for the nonmilitary agencies. There are many U.S., in ternational, and indigenous organizations needing coordination. ... The most important connections are those with joint, interagency, multinational, and host-nation organizations to ensure, as much as possible, that objectives are shared and actions and messages synchronized. Achieving synergy is another essential element for effective COIN.
