That’s if you believe the screaming headlines, anyway. So, what have we got so far? We’ve got a drunk art school student who volunteers for a liberal organization that’s in favor of the Ground Zero Mosque. He stabbed a cabbie in midtown Manhattan after asking the guy if he was a Muslim. The kid’s in jail, and it looks like the cabbie, Ahmed Sharif, is going to be okay. Physically, at least.
If anybody is qualified to opine on the Ground Zero Mosque, if anybody can be said to have Absolute Moral Authority™ on the issue, it’s Sharif, right? So, what does he think about it?
“I know many people are upset. I didn’t support the mosque at Ground Zero, either,” the Jamaica, Queens, resident said.
What do you know: Sharif don’t like it. Isn’t it amazing how quickly somebody can transform from “heroic survivor of a horrifying hate crime” to “evilmongering right-wing bigotard”?
Oh, and the knife-wielding numbskull, Michael Enright, was reportedly carrying a backpack with a bottle of scotch and notebooks full of anti-Muslim rants, but now the police say the notebooks don’t actually contain any anti-Muslim rants. And I’m guessing the bottle doesn’t contain much scotch.
In other anti-Muslim crime wave news, we’ve also got a guy named Omar Rivera, who capped off a five-day drunk by wandering into a Queens mosque Wednesday night, flipping people off, and peeing on some prayer rugs. But The Hate Crime of the Century soon, um, petered out.
I don’t usually recommend reading Talking Points Memo, but this post is worth it for the author’s increasingly and palpably disappointed updates (deletion in the original):
Omar Rivera of the Bronx was arrested and charged with criminal trespassing last night, after he entered a Queens mosque drunk and urinated inside, the NYPD confirmed to TPM.
Mustapha Sadouki told the New York Post, which first reported the incident, that Rivera entered the Al-Iman Mosque “with a beer bottle in his hands, clearly very intoxicated.”
The Post reported that Rivera also shouted
anti-Muslimslurs, but the NYPD did not confirm that fact to TPM…Late Update: The Washington Post was told by the NYPD that Rivera was so drunk that he didn’t even know he was at a mosque, and police say they don’t believe the incident was bias-related. The New York Post has since updated its original story — removing any mention of anti-Muslim slurs. A police source also tells the Post that when found by worshipers, Rivera said “My sister’s dead.”
Late Late Update: The NYPD now confirms to TPM that the incident is not being investigated as bias-related. The NYPD said members of the mosque stated that Rivera did not make biased comments during the incident.
Other than that, though, it fits the obvious pattern. Mayor Bloomberg was last seen rushing to the mosque with a scrub brush and a big bottle of white vinegar. No word yet whether Rivera is Hispanic, which would only increase the identity-politics headache.
If you assault people because of their religion, you’re an idiot. And if you use such an assault — or desperately try to concoct one — to further a political agenda, you may or may not be an idiot. But you’re definitely a vulture.
P.S. For more about the narrative of hate, see Doc Zero.
P.P.S. Frank J: “You almost have to feel for the liberals at this point. They keep getting so close to that example of right-wing violence and hate that they’re salivating over, and then Lucy keeps pulling away the football.”
