NYC Cops: 'Are You Muslim?' Leads To Cabbie Stabbing

CBSNews.com:

Mayor Michael Bloomberg has invited a taxi driver, who was allegedly attacked by a baby-faced college student this week, to meet at City Hall on Thursday.


Ahmed Sharif picked up the clean-cut 21-year-old on Tuesday night — and it nearly cost him his life. Police said Michael Enright flew into a rage after asking his driver if he was a Muslim.


CBS 2’s Lou Young reports that’s when a vicious slashing attack started.

Sharif, 43, displayed his wounds with sorrow on Wednesday night: a deep gash on his forearm, a defensive wound on his hand, and slashes to his neck and upper lip — the handiwork, police said, of a passenger who savaged the immigrant cabbie in what appears to have been an explosion of anti-Muslim violence in the close confines of his New York City taxi.


“I’m driving. He asked me where I’m from. I said Bangladesh. Second question he ask me, are you Muslim? I said yes. Then he tells me ‘assalamu alaikum,’” Sharif said.