For years, Muslim New Yorkers have gathered at Washington Square Park on Eid Holiday for prayer services to showcase the city’s religious and ethnic diversity.
But this year, right-wing influencers have shared footage of the rally, presenting them as a malicious “aggression” linked to Muslim New York City mayoral candidate Zoran Mamdani.
“The atmosphere of terror is insane,” says Assad Dandia, a local historian and Muslim American activist, who supports the Mamdani campaign. “I think the community and our leadership know that we are on the radar right now.”
Muslim Americans across New York and across the nation said the country is surged into Islamophobic rhetoric in response to Mamdani’s victory in the Democratic primary.
Supporters said the wave of hateful comments indicates that despite the appearance of Islamophobia retreating in recent years, the US remains an addiction for Islamophobia stigma.
“The more things change, the more they stay the same,” Dandia said.
“Islam is not a religion.”
It’s not just attacking Mamdani and his identity as well as anonymous internet users and online anti-Muslim figures. It was joined by a flood of politicians, including some of President Donald Trump’s orbit.
Rep. Randy Fein suggested that if Rep. Marjorie Taylor Green was elected while posting a Statue of Liberty cartoon on X’s Burka, Mamdani would propose without evidence that he would install a “caliphate” in New York City.
Former national security adviser Michael Flynn attacked the mayoral candidate and argued that Islam is a political ideology and “not a religion.”
Others, like conservative activist Charlie Kirk, called Mamdani a “Muslim Maoist,” and right-wing commentator Angie Wong told CNN that New Yorkers “are worried about their safety and live with the Muslim mayor.”
Laura Rumer, a far-right activist who is a close friend of the Trump Empire, calls the mayoral candidate “a jihadist Muslim” and claims he is linked to both Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood.
Andy Ogres, the Republican leader, wrote to the Justice Department, calling for Mamdani’s citizenship to be revoked and he would be deported.
On Sunday, Rep. Brandon Gill posted a video of Mamdani eating biryani with his hands, calling on him to “not eat this way” and “civilized people” to “return to the third world.”
Seeking criticism
“We’ve been getting flashbacks since 9/11,” said Shahana Haniff, a member of the New York City Council. “I was a child at the time, and even so, prejudice and Islamophobia were horrifying as a child.”
Hanif, who represents the Brooklyn district, comfortably won reelection last week in a ceasefire race in Gaza, focusing on her advocacy against Palestinian rights.
She told Al Jazeera that anti-Muslim rhetoric in response to Mamdani’s victory aims to divert and derail the progressive energy that defeated the establishment to secure his Democratic nomination.
Hanif said Islamophobic comments should be condemned across political spheres, emphasizing that there is “a lot more to do” to undo racism in the United States.
While some Democrats have denounced the campaign against Mamdani, the party’s main figures — including many in New York — have not issued a formal statement on the issue.
“We should all be tired of the flood of anti-Muslim remarks that Zoran Mamdani has spewed in the aftermath of his NYC mayorate primary victory.
“It’s embarrassing to members of Congress who are engaged in such biases and those who don’t challenge it.”
Joint Statement on Despicable Anti-Muslim Racist Attacks on Zohran Mamdani: pic.twitter.com/qrgovh0jdg
– June 27, 2025, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (@Reprashida)
Trump and Muslim voters
At the same time, New York’s leading Democratic Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand has been accused of burning prejudice against Mamdani. Last week, she falsely accused Mamdani of making a “reference to global jihad.”
Her office later told the media that she was raising concerns over Mamdani’s refusal for refusing to “mispoke” and criticize the phrase “globalisation of intifadas.”
Critics of the chant argued that it made Jews feel unsafe to evoke the Palestinian uprisings of the late 1980s and early 2000s.
While the South Asian Mamdani focused on the campaign to make New York affordable, his support for Palestinian rights came on the central stage of criticism of him. Since the election, the attacks, particularly on the right, appear to have shifted to his Muslim identity.
The backlash comes after Trump and his allies put Muslim voters on trial last year when they bid for the presidency. In fact, the US President has appointed two Muslim mayors from Michigan to be ambassadors to Tunisia and Kuwait.
In preparation for the election, Trump called Muslim Americans “smart” and “good people.”
Republicans appeared to lower their anti-Islamic language as they sought votes for socially conservative communities.
But Corey Saylor, director of research and advocacy for the Council on America and Islamic Relations, said Islamophobia is a cycle.
“Islamophobia is burned into American society,” Saylor told Al Jazeera.
“It wasn’t front and center, but I think all that’s needed to get the switch back in is that it’s looking at it again.”
Islamophobia “industry”
Negative portrayals of Arabs and Muslims in American media, pop culture and political discourse have been going on for decades.
That trend intensified after the 2001 al-Qaeda attack on 9/11. Right-wing activists then began warning about what they said was planning to implement Islamic religious law in the West.
Muslims were also the subject of conspiracy theory opposed to “Islamization” of the United States through immigration.
In the early 2000s, there was a think tank dedicated to bashing Islam with “counter-terrorism experts” and bashing Islam and bashing fears about religion with loosely connected networks that community supporters described as “industry.”
The atmosphere regularly permeated mainstream political conversations. For example, Trump then called for a “complete and complete closure of Muslims entering the United States” in 2015.
Even in liberal New York, where the 9/11 attack killed more than 2,600 people at the World Trade Center in 2001, Muslim communities withstanded the backlash.
After the attack, New York police established a network of masked informants to monitor mosques, businesses and student associations in Muslim communities.
The program was dissolved in 2014, and a few years later, the city reached a legitimate settlement with the Muslim community and agreed to implement stronger surveillance on police investigations to prevent abuse.
In 2010, the city’s Muslim community fell into the national spotlight once again after facing fierce opposition as it faced a global trade center where plans for the lower Muslim community center in Manhattan were destroyed.
Many Republicans launched conspiracy theories against the Community Center, but several Democrats and a prominent pro-Israel group, anti-abolition league, joined them to oppose the ultimately discarded project.
“We’re more than this.”
Now, Muslims in New York are finding themselves once again in the eyes of the storm of Islamophobia. But now, supporters said their community is more resilient than ever.
“We are confident in the voice and institutional strength of our community, and the support we have from our allies,” Dandia said.
“Yes, we’re dealing with this Islamophobic repulsion, but we can now fight back, so we don’t want to look like just victims.
Hanif reflected his comments.
“For the past 25 years, we have built a strong coalition that includes the Jewish community, which will allow us to say we are beyond this and take care of each other, including Asian, Latino and Black communities,” she told Al Jazeera.
