Throughout a generation, the most lasting image of New York City (NYC) has been the view of the Twin Towers that are beaten by airplanes on September 11, 2001.
The spectrum of that disaster has persecuted the city of all kinds of palpable and impalpable forms. One of the last has undoubtedly been the underground current of Islamophobia that has thrown on the skyscrapers and streets of New York. Muslims have been suspicious, profiled in the streets, attacked in the subway, vilified and ridiculed. So have made the causes related to Muslims. An excellent example has been how students who protest against genocide in Gaza have been hunted and processed.
On Tuesday, however, the city finally seemed to change the page. After an election of classification choice, a 33 -year -old Muslim immigrant, son of a professor and filmmaker, became nominated for the Democratic Party for the Mayor of New York. The victory is historic in many ways, Zohran Mamdani will be the youngest mayor, the first Muslim American mayor, the first mayor of immigrants and the first mayor who has won on a democratic-socialist platform.
Unlike the rest of the Democratic Party, which has been silent in Gaza, Mamdani has condemned the genocide open and repeatedly. More importantly, Mamdani has an openly socialist agenda that undertakes to help the city’s middle class, crushed by the affordability crisis, promoting groceries owned by the city, care of free children and freezing rentals for those who fight to live in the city.
The chances of going from a candidate for mayor to Al Mayor in the elections in November are high. New York is a democratic city and the candidate who wins the Democratic primaries generally wins the race throughout the city in the mayor’s elections. In the period prior to the elections, most surveys predicted that Mamdani’s opponent, former governor Andrew Cuomo, would win the primaries.
This did not happen, and around midnight on election day, Cuomo admitted to Mamdani, whose votes of votes were ahead of eight points. The other opponent of Mamdani, the current Mayor of New York, Eric Adams, has faced its own challenges. Although he has promised to run as independent, his accusation for positions of corruption and the fact that President Donald Trump forgave him, even if he were going to run against Mamdani as Independent.
This does not mean, of course, that the way ahead is easy or completely clear. Mamdani’s support among younger voters, immigrants in southern Asia and East Asia, as well as in the middle class neighborhoods of the city, allowed him to collect the $ 8 million maximums that candidates are allowed in an election. However, your opponents can spend large amounts to attack it.
This was evident in the period prior to the vote, when the former mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, financed the main attacks against Mamdani. These ads focused on painting Mamdani as extremist, mainly due to their open support and without apologies to Muslim and Palestinian causes. For their part, Mamdani’s ads were positive and colorful and sought to mobilize the diverse population of the largest city in the United States to finally vote for the definitive change.
Another reason why Mamdani’s victory has been shocking is that New York also houses the largest population of American Jews in the country and one of the greatest outside the state of Israel. Mamdani’s openly antisionist posture has bothered many in this community. His victory has shocked the many donors and rich and propositionist political groups of the city. They are very likely to use their money to try to demolish Mamdani’s candidacy to frustrate the history of history that would otherwise have seen a Muslim immigrant as mayor of the largest city in the United States in terms of population.
One of the main reasons why Mamdani’s victory has been shocking is that New York is home to the largest population of American Jews in the country.
Until now, Mamdani’s campaign has been able to absorb all these attacks. One reason for this is that his victory is based on the solid base of the base organization between the Pakistani, Bangladesi and Arab communities that make up a solid voting bank in Queens, where Mamdani is from.
These communities now have decades of experience in the organization and the treatment with Islamophobic attacks that paint their leaders as terrorists, in fact, anything even remotely linked to Islam, as inherently extremist. Mamdani’s victory suggests that even the general population of New York is fed up with these attacks and being saturated with the same ancient Islamophobic propaganda that has been thrown to contaminate each and every one of the American Muslim candidates for almost anything.
As important as this is the courage that Mamdani has so far demonstrated in defending a democratic-socialist agenda. The average rentals for a two bedroom apartment in New York are often more than $ 5,000, creating a crisis in which the city’s middle class is facing overwhelming inflationary costs. The crime has increased in the city and the meters have become insecure and prone to the attacks of the mentally and homeless diseases, which do not take place where to go. Women feel especially insecure in the city’s public transport system, which was once the pride of New York.
Conventional Democrats have avoided proposing solutions to these problems, as they have turned their backs on the ascending Islamophobia and the growing harassment of migrants and undocumented people. Mamdani’s victory suggests that Democratic voters are eager to move further to the left instead of the center, which has been the preference of the party nationwide.
At the same time, while a victory for Mamdani is likely, it is not a fact. Many months are between now and November, and Mamdani’s enemies are formidable. However, having gone so far and demonstrating that so many people are wrong, Zohran Mamdani has shown that change is possible even in a city, which for quite some time has treated Muslims as suspects.
The writer is a lawyer who teaches constitutional law and political philosophy.
rafia.zakaria@gmail.com
Posted in Dawn, June 28, 2025
