On October 24, 2025, the steps outside the Islamic Cultural Center of The Bronx became the unlikely stage for a political flashpoint, as Democratic mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani delivered an emotional speech that would set off a storm of responses across New York City and beyond. With just days until early voting in one of the city’s most hotly contested mayoral races in decades, Mamdani—an assemblyman and proud Muslim—stood before a crowd of supporters and press, his voice trembling as he recalled the aftermath of September 11, 2001, through the eyes of his own family.
“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” Mamdani said, pausing to collect himself as emotion overtook him, according to The New York Post. The image was striking: a candidate on the cusp of making history as New York’s first Muslim mayor, openly sharing the personal cost of living in the city during one of its darkest chapters.
But Mamdani’s remarks, which he framed as a call for representation and the right of Muslim New Yorkers to feel at home in their city, quickly became the center of a heated debate. As The Guardian and Breitbart News reported, his anecdote about his aunt—who, out of fear, avoided the subway for years after 9/11—was seized upon by critics as minimizing the gravity of the terrorist attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people. The backlash was swift and, at times, deeply personal.
“According to Zohran the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks,” wrote Vice President JD Vance on social media, echoing a sentiment that ricocheted through online forums and comment sections. Others accused Mamdani of “trivializing a national trauma just to play victim,” as one social media user put it, while another posted, “The real victims of 9/11 never rode the subway again,” alongside photos of the deceased.
Mamdani, however, stood firm. His speech in the Bronx was as much a response to recent campaign attacks as it was an expression of his personal narrative. He accused his opponents—former Governor Andrew Cuomo, running as an independent; Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa; and even current Mayor Eric Adams—of stoking Islamophobia in a bid to derail his campaign. “In an era of ever-diminishing bipartisanship, it seems that Islamophobia has emerged as one of the few areas of agreement,” Mamdani declared, according to The New York Post and Breitbart News.
The context for his remarks was a campaign season already marred by accusations and incendiary rhetoric. Just days earlier, during a radio interview, Cuomo had chuckled at WABC host Sid Rosenberg’s suggestion that Mamdani “would be cheering” if “another 9/11” happened. Mamdani called out Cuomo for what he described as a dangerous, Islamophobic insinuation. In the final mayoral debate on October 22, Curtis Sliwa accused Mamdani of supporting “global jihad,” a charge Mamdani dismissed as slanderous and emblematic of the anti-Muslim bias he says has dogged his candidacy.
“The dream of every Muslim is simply to be treated as any other New Yorker, and yet for too long we have been told to ask for less than that and to be satisfied with whatever little we receive,” Mamdani told the crowd, his words reported by The New York Post. “No more.” He pledged, “I will not change who I am, how I eat, or the faith that I’m proud to call my own. But there is one thing that I will change. I will no longer look for myself in the shadows. I will find myself in the light.”
The speech was also a direct response to the controversy swirling around Mamdani’s recent meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Photos of the smiling candidate with Wahhaj and City Councilman Yusef Salaam, posted on social media on October 17, quickly made headlines, as Breitbart News and The New York Post noted. Critics pointed out Wahhaj’s controversial past, including his identification by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing and his history of inflammatory statements.
Mamdani downplayed the significance of the meeting, saying, “The same imam met with Mayor Bloomberg, met with Mayor De Blasio, campaigned alongside Eric Adams, and the only time it became an issue of national attention was when I met with him. That’s because of the fact of my faith and because I’m on the precipice of winning this election.” His point, echoed by supporters, was that his Muslim identity was being unfairly scrutinized in a way that previous mayors and candidates had not experienced.
The campaign’s increasingly acrimonious tone has not gone unnoticed by political observers. According to The Guardian, Mamdani’s speech and the reactions to it have highlighted the persistent undercurrents of suspicion and discrimination faced by Muslim Americans, particularly in the years since 9/11. For Mamdani, his aunt’s experience—her fear of harassment for wearing a hijab—was not meant to overshadow the horror and loss of September 11, but to illustrate how the tragedy’s aftermath rippled through entire communities, changing the fabric of daily life for many.
Yet, critics such as JD Vance and numerous social media users argued that personal stories of discrimination should not be allowed to compete with the collective loss and sacrifice associated with 9/11. “Invoking a family member’s discomfort after 9/11 risks minimizing the scale of the tragedy,” Vance said, per The Guardian. The debate, in many ways, mirrors broader national conversations about identity, representation, and the boundaries of empathy in public discourse.
For Mamdani, the stakes are particularly high. If elected, he would become New York City’s first Muslim mayor—a milestone that, for his supporters, represents progress and the promise of a more inclusive city. For his detractors, however, his candidacy is fraught with questions about loyalty, security, and the appropriate way to remember and honor the victims of terrorism.
As the city heads toward Election Day, the controversy surrounding Mamdani’s remarks and his candidacy shows no sign of abating. The mayoral race, already one of the most consequential in recent memory, has become a referendum not just on public safety and governance, but on the very meaning of belonging and identity in America’s largest city.
In the end, the story of Zohran Mamdani’s campaign is as much about the city’s future as it is about its past—a reminder that the wounds of 9/11, and the divisions it exposed, remain raw even nearly a quarter-century later.
