As the mayor settles into office, the attacks on his faith continue — and so does the community standing behind him
Faith, Power and the Politics of Fear
New York City has a new mayor, and for a certain slice of the political spectrum, the fact that he is Muslim is itself the controversy. Since Zohran Mamdani’s stunning primary upset over Andrew Cuomo last June, he has faced a campaign of anti-Muslim rhetoric that has not stopped with his inauguration. The New York Times reported on the persistence of that targeted harassment in early March 2026, even as Mamdani had been governing for more than two months.
A Campaign Defined by Bigotry
The attacks began in force the night of the Democratic primary. According to CAIR Action, an arm of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, there were at least 127 violent hate-related incidents referencing Mamdani or his campaign within a single day after polls closed. The organization logged roughly 6,200 online posts containing anti-Muslim slurs or hostility, a five-fold increase from a typical day, with about 62 percent originating on the platform X. Republican members of Congress, including Andy Ogles of Tennessee and Nancy Mace of South Carolina, drew widespread criticism for posts that compared Mamdani’s candidacy to the September 11 attacks. Mace posted a photo of the Statue of Liberty in a burqa. Ogles wrote to the attorney general questioning Mamdani’s citizenship. Ritchie Torres, a House Democrat from New York, said it was “profoundly un-American” to demand the deportation of an American citizen simply because he is Muslim.
The Mayor’s Own Words
Mamdani has not remained silent. In October 2025, one day before early voting began, he stood outside the Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx and spoke through tears. He said he had believed that if he bit his tongue and redirected to his central message of affordability, his faith would eventually stop being weaponized against him. He was wrong. “For as long as we have lived,” he told the assembled crowd, “we have known that no matter what anyone says, there are still certain forms of hate that are acceptable in this city. Islamophobia is not seen as inexcusable.” He said more than one million Muslims live in the five boroughs and are made to feel like guests in their own home. “No more,” he said. The speech was widely compared to Barack Obama’s landmark address on race and identity during his 2008 campaign.
The Interfaith Response
What has been equally significant is the breadth of support Mamdani has received across religious communities. Interfaith Alliance, a national advocacy organization, documented how Muslim, Jewish, Christian and Sikh leaders organized together to stand alongside Mamdani at rallies that drew thousands. “The blatant Islamophobia that we are seeing from some Members of Congress and other extreme voices is grotesque, unacceptable and deeply dangerous,” said the group’s president, Rev. Paul Brandeis Raushenbush. Brad Lander, the city comptroller who ran against Mamdani in the Democratic primary, stated plainly: “When we say the safety and thriving of Jews and Muslims is bound up together, it is just patently true.”
The Antisemitism Accusation and the Dodge
Critics have also accused Mamdani of antisemitism, largely on the basis of his stated positions on Israel and Gaza. Mamdani has repeatedly pushed back on that charge, noting that he pledged on inauguration day to continue the Mayor’s Office to Combat Anti-Semitism. He has appointed a Jewish police commissioner, Jessica Tisch. He has said his administration will “celebrate and cherish” Jewish New Yorkers. The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported in February that his proposed Department of Community Safety, described as a key anti-hate-crime initiative, had not yet appeared in his preliminary budget. That absence drew scrutiny from some Jewish advocacy groups.
What the Data Shows
An analysis by the Center for the Study of Online Hate found that more than 6,600 social media posts mentioned Mamdani in a single five-day window during his campaign. Nearly 40 percent contained explicitly Islamophobic content. Fifteen percent combined Islamophobic and antisemitic tropes simultaneously, portraying Muslims and Jews as a joint threat to what some posters called “Western civilization.” Researchers who study online hate have noted that the pattern is consistent with broader documented trends: the Anti-Defamation League has tracked a near-doubling of anti-Muslim incidents nationally since 2019, a trend that intensified after the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.
Governing While Muslim
In the end, Mamdani has continued to govern. He has focused his public statements on housing, child care, immigration protection and energy costs. Whether the scrutiny of his faith will become a persistent feature of his mayoralty or fade as his record develops is a question that New York — and the country — will be watching. As he told supporters in the Bronx on that October afternoon: “I thought that if I behaved well enough, it would allow me to be more than just my faith. I was wrong.” Research from the Pew Research Center has documented that Muslims in the United States report discrimination at rates higher than most other religious groups. That data gives context to what Mamdani described as the lived experience of Muslim New Yorkers — an experience that now, for the first time, is shared by the person sitting in Gracie Mansion.
