As we approach the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, it has created an opportunity to reflect on what's happened in the quarter-century since that fateful day, but more importantly, it has created an opportunity to get angry at New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani for being Muslim.
In late July, Giovanni Galante, whose wife Grace was killed in the attacks, posted an online petition requesting that the mayor not be allowed to participate in this year's remembrance ceremony. The reasons that Mamdani's presence would be supposedly disrespectful include the following: "Support for, or associations with, individuals whose public statements or records are viewed by concerned family members as dismissive of American institutions or insufficiently critical of extremist ideologies." Basically anything could qualify under that criteria, which I suppose is the point.
One of Galante's other reasons is that Mamdani once took a photo with Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn imam whom law enforcement put on a list while investigating the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Andrew Cuomo had attacked Mamdani for this during last year's mayoral race, repeating the feds' terminology that Wahhaj was an "unindicted co-conspirator." Another way to phrase that might be "never actually charged with a crime." As mayor, Michael Bloomberg once met with Wahhaj, and yet somehow that didn't disqualify him from attending any 9/11 ceremonies. Besides, Mamdani already attended last year before he was elected.
Anyone who remembers the "Ground Zero mosque" non-controversy can figure out the playbook here. Years ago, when a developer planned to build an Islamic community center in lower Manhattan, Pamela Geller and other bigots of that era freaked out and disingenuously framed the project as an enormous mosque on the smoldering rubble of the World Trade Center, even though that wasn't what was actually happening. As conservatives attacked an entire religion to little resistance, and the Anti-Defamation League endorsed the hysteria, the victims' families were asked for their opinions on the building plan despite it having nothing to do with them, because, again, it wasn't even on the same street. It was a straightforwardly xenophobic strategy that relied on the assumption that anything Muslim near Ground Zero would contaminate or desecrate it, and supposedly bring further harm to the families. That same logic now extends to Mamdani, whose mere presence would be a reminder that fearmongering did not stop 1.1 million New Yorkers from picking him as mayor.
Ultimately, the plan for the community center was scrapped. In this case, Galante's petition has 80,000 signatures as of writing. A July 26 New York Post cover falsely framed it as "thousands of 9/11 families" who don't want the mayor there, but anyone who can click a few buttons can sign the petition. Galante doesn't even know how many actual families support his cause; he just told the Post it might be around 300. From Judd Legum of Popular Information:
“We don’t have a list,” Galante said. Rather, the 300 figure that organizers shared with the New York Post was an estimate based on how they believe the petition spread before it received much publicity. “We all know each other, so…think about it. If you know 10 people and they give it to 10 more people they know that lost. That’s how we got the 300 number,” Galante explained. “I don’t go through the list and look at the names.”
Great, so this is all based on bad math. Despite that, CNN's Gloria Pazmino took it at face value this weekend and characterized it as a "commemoration controversy," pretending there were two equivalent sides to this non-issue. "Mamdani, a democratic socialist who is a lightning rod especially for those on the right, is now the subject of a petition to have him banned from ceremonies commemorating what happened," Pazmino wrote. "Opponents castigate him for what they say are extremist views on his support for Palestinian rights and criticism of the Israeli government." What does that have to do with 9/11? Did someone also claim to see Ms. Rachel across the river in New Jersey, cheering as the Twin Towers fell?
Pazmino also got this insightful quote from one of the families:
“This guy, I think, is just an in-your-face type of guy that — for lack of a better word — enjoys this kind of controversy. I’m just not in favor of him being around, so if he didn’t come, I’d say great, we would go. But if he’s going to come, I would venture to say a lot of people might not go,” said Hughes, who is now retired and lives on Long Island.
Huge news: A guy on Long Island doesn't like Zohran Mamdani. This sounds like a real issue. If you think about it, it's very insensitive for the mayor to step foot in Manhattan at all. After all, that's where 9/11 happened.
