Sorry Islamophobes, I'm a Proud Muslim American and, Like Zohran Mamdani, I'm Not Going Anywhere
The insanely bigoted attacks on Mamdani are out of control and designed to intimidate a vulnerable minority community – but they will fail.
“It takes a toll,” a tearful Zohran Mamdani told reporters last week, referring to the vile Islamophobic abuse and death threats he has been subjected to since launching his New York mayoral campaign. “I get messages that say, ‘The only good Muslim is a dead Muslim.’ I get threats on my life, on the people that I love.”
I got a little emotional myself listening to Mamdani speak. His words resonated with me after 16 years in public life as an outspoken journalist and pundit who happens to be a Muslim and also, since 2015, as an immigrant. I know very well what that “toll” is like for Muslims in the UK and the US who dare to put their heads above the parapet; my family and I have our own emotional and psychological scars to prove it. “Every morning, I take a deep breath and then go online to discover what new insult or smear has been thrown in my direction,” I wrote in The Guardian back in 2012. “Whether it's tweets, blogposts, or comment threads, the abuse is as relentless as it is vicious.”
More than a decade later, little has changed. In fact, so much feels familiar. A Republican president citing imaginary weapons of mass destruction just bombed a Muslim-majority country, while also ratcheting up Islamophobia and anti-immigrant animus at home. Although, to be fair to George W. Bush – and I hate to be fair to George W. Bush! – he was a Republican president who at least went through the motions of visiting a mosque after 9/11 and declaring, “Islam is peace.” Can you imagine President Donald Trump doing anything similar right now?
Don’t. Be. Silly.
So I take it back. Much has changed since 2012. And it has changed for the worse. Today, Islamophobia is much more prevalent, much more vicious, and much more mainstream in American public life.
Take the insanely bigoted reactions to Mamdani’s shock victory in the first round of the Democratic primary for mayor of New York on Tuesday. Republicans have been competing with one another to deliver the most Islamophobic response to his win.
“There will be another 9/11 in NYC and [Mamdani] will be to blame,” declaimed Laura Loomer, a close friend of – and adviser to – the president of the United States. “24 years ago a group of Muslims killed 2,753 people on 9/11,” wrote Charlie Kirk, another top ally of Donald Trump. “Now a Muslim Socialist is on pace to run New York City.” Republican commentator Angie Wong said live on CNN that New Yorkers were “concerned about their safety, living here with a Muslim mayor.”
You think the right-wing pundits are bad? Consider the reaction from Republican members of Congress. Rep. Elise Stefanik called Mamdani a “jihadist.” Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene posted an AI-generated image of what appeared to be the Statue of Liberty covered in some kind of burqa or niqab, with the words: “This hits hard.” Rep. Andy Ogles went the furthest in the Republicans’ Bigotry Olympics, referring to Mamdani as “little muhammad” and calling for the Democratic mayoral candidate to be denaturalized and “DEPORTED.”
Got that? An elected Republican member of Congress is calling for the deportation of an American citizen. A Muslim American citizen.
As plenty of people have pointed out online this week, the masks are off but the hoods are on.
Now, I could keep going, citing many more Republicans and conservatives who have attacked Mamdani’s Muslim faith and identity in recent days, but here’s the thing: it isn’t just Republicans or conservatives doing it.
Islamophobia has long been a bipartisan endeavor in this country. Democrats and liberals haven’t been afraid to indulge in Islamophobic tropes and conspiracies, from Harry Reid and Howard Dean coming out against the so-called ‘Ground Zero’ mosque back in 2010, to Rep. Josh Gottheimer allegedly saying last year that Muslims should feel “guilty” about the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks, to Bill Maher’s long history of anti-Muslim remarks.
During the mayoral campaign, a flyer from a super PAC supporting the Andrew Cuomo campaign featured a photo of Mamdani that “appeared to have been altered to make his beard look darker and thicker.” (It was, according to that super PAC, never sent out.)
On Thursday, New York’s junior Democratic Senator Kirsten Gillibrand appeared on Brian Lehrer’s WNYC call-in show and (falsely) accused Mamdani of having made “references to global jihad.” To be clear, Mamdani has never made any such references. And yet, a sitting Democratic senator was fine with suggesting that the presumptive mayoral nominee of her party in New York, who happens to be Muslim, might be a terrorist. How on Earth has she not been asked to resign by the party leadership? Or at least censured and condemned? Could it be because there is no penalty for brazen Islamophobia even on the liberal end of the political spectrum?
Last year, when President Joe Biden picked Adeel Mangi to be the first Muslim American to serve on a federal appeals court, three of Gilliband’s Democratic colleagues in the Senate – Joe Manchin, Jacky Rosen, and Catherine Cortez Masto – joined with every Republican senator to block his nomination.
Then there’s John Fetterman, the junior Democratic senator from Pennsylvania. “You can’t reform a carton of sour milk,” Fetterman told a Jewish American activist, according to New York magazine, referring to the Palestinians. He also (falsely) claimed he had never met an Arab who was willing to condemn Hamas.
We talk a great deal about antisemitism in this country, and, yes, antisemitism is on the rise and a very real issue – as Mamdani himself repeatedly attested to during the campaign. Yet, thankfully, there are no politicians calling for the deportation of Jewish public figures; no politicians posting AI-generated images of the Statue of Liberty featuring a yarmulke; no politicians voting to block Jewish judges from serving on federal appeals courts. Such rhetoric and actions are reserved only for Muslims in the United States, which then normalizes Islamophobia amongst the public at large.
The polling is clear: Muslims endure the highest prejudice of any religious and ethnic group in the US, and that prejudice has been increasing in recent years. Three times as many Americans – and five times as many Republicans – oppose a Muslim presidential candidate as they do a Jewish presidential candidate. And, when Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old Muslim boy, a Palestinian American, was stabbed to death in a hate crime after Oct. 7, it barely attracted any national attention.
Yet Congress holds multiple hearings on antisemitism while ignoring growing Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred – including against their own Muslim members. Day after day, ordinary Muslims across the length and breadth of the United States are expected to suck it up and endure insult after insult, trope after trope, threat after threat.
The Islamophobes’ strategy is clear. They want us to be afraid and insecure; to keep our heads down. They want us cowed and intimidated. As Mamdani told MSNBC on Wednesday: “I’ve spoken to many Muslims across this city who have shared that their fear of having to be essentially branded a terrorist just by living in public life is one that keeps them preferring life in the shadows, life outside of that specter. And this is not the way that we can have our city be. It’s not the way that we can have our country be.”
He’s right. But I, for one, am a Muslim American who founded a new media company to speak truth to power because I have no intention of staying in the shadows.
And Zohran Mamdani is a Muslim American who ran for the highest office in the biggest city in the country, and is on course for victory in the fall, because he has no intention of staying in the shadows.
The same applies to Ilhan Omar, Rashida Tlaib, André Carson, Keith Ellison, Ali Velshi, Ayman Mohyeldin, Amna Nawaz, Ramy Youssef, Mo Amer, Hasan Minhaj, and many more.
Because Muslim Americans are not going anywhere. I’m sorry to have to break it to the Islamophobes, but as Zohran Mamdani so powerfully demonstrated on Tuesday, we’re just getting started.
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Bless you Mehdi!! You are a hero and many many Americans ( who aren’t nuts) are with you and love and respect you. Thank you for your brilliance and your courage. 🇺🇸♥️🇺🇸♥️
This world is made better by your existence, Mehdi.