THE INCIDENT felt like a harbinger of violence between Christians and Muslims in America, as the superheated dispute continues over the construction of an Islamic community centre two blocks from the site of the 9/11 atrocities in Manhattan.
Michael Enright, a 21-year-old film student from New York, has been charged with second degree attempted murder as a hate crime, first degree assault as a hate crime and criminal possession of a weapon, after he attacked a Muslim taxi driver with a switch-blade knife this week in Manhattan.
Mr Enright may have been drunk. He may have been affected by the five weeks he spent filming a US Marine unit in Afghanistan last spring. The increasingly ugly debate about the so-called “Ground Zero mosque” may have triggered something in him.
The chubby young man appeared in court wearing cargo shorts, sneakers and a striped polo neck shirt on Wednesday. He could face up to 25 years in prison for his assault on Ahmed Sharif, a taxi driver who emigrated from Bangladesh 25 years ago.
Mr Sharif told the New York Timeshow Mr Enright asked him where he was from, whether he was a Muslim, and greeted him with the Arabic "Salaam aleikum". But when Mr Enright began to mock the rites of Ramadan, Mr Sharif grew silent. Mr Enright began to shout "This is the checkpoint" and "I have to bring you down". "He was talking like he was a soldier," Mr Sharif said.
Mr Sharif said Mr Enright reached through the opening in the plexiglass partition between driver and passenger and pulled a knife across his throat, then stabbed him in the face, arm and on his thumbs while the driver pleaded: “I beg of you, don’t kill me. I worked so hard. I have a family.”
Muslim groups appealed to politicians and clerics to try to stop the frenzy of anti-Muslim rhetoric. “Hate speech often leads to hate crime,” noted Nihad Awad of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, who is Jewish, is the most prominent supporter of the Islamic centre. He released a statement saying the attack on Mr Sharif “runs counter to everything that New Yorkers believe” and invited Mr Sharif to City Hall yesterday. Mr Bloomberg won praise from liberal commentators for his speech at an Iftar dinner at Gracie Mansion earlier in the week. The mayor dismissed talk of a compromise that would move the centre elsewhere.
“The question will then become, ‘How big should the ‘no mosque zone’ around the World Trade Center be?’” Mr Bloomberg said.
“There is already a mosque four blocks away. Should it, too, be moved? This is a test of our commitment to American values.”
Those values are interpreted differently by Pastor Terry Jones of the Dove World Outreach Centre in Gainesville, Florida. Mr Jones has posted signs saying "Islam is of the Devil" outside his church and has scheduled a bonfire of Korans for September 11th. He told the New York Timesthat the Muslim holy book is "full of lies" but then admitted, "I have no experience with it whatsoever. I only know what the Bible says."
Mr Jones claims to hope that his Koran-burning will not lead to violence, and says he does not understand why the largest evangelical association in the US has asked him to cancel the event. He wears a pistol in a holster since receiving death threats, but e-mails of support are flooding in to his office, and donors have sent him at least $1,000. He says he wants to “send a message to Islam and the pushers of sharia law: that it is not what we want”.
Such language has found its way into Republican political speech. Last March, Allen West, a retired army officer who is standing for Congress in Florida, told supporters that “Islam is not a religion” but a “vicious enemy” that is “infiltrating” American society. Ron McNeil, another candidate in Florida, last week told teenage students that Islam intends “to destroy our way of life”.