Out of nearly 36,000 Islamophobic posts about the NYC mayoral election published on X over the past five months, almost three-quarters were targeting Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, according to a new report released Monday.
The posts, authored by more than 17,000 unique accounts, often framed Mamdani as a terrorist or radical threat – and the frequency of those posts increased sharply in the days following Andrew Cuomo’s remark that Mamdani could be cheering if the city faced another 9/11, according to data from the Center for the Study of Organized Hate (CSOH), a research think tank based in Washington, D.C.
“In a climate of deepening polarization and rising political violence, such rhetoric becomes even more dangerous as it could create real risks for Muslim Americans and those perceived as Muslim,” Raqib Naik, executive director of CSOH, told Documented.
Fahd Ahmed, executive director of DRUM Beats (Desis Rising Up and Moving Beats), a coalition of South Asia and Indo-Caribbean immigrant workers and youth in NYC, remembers what it was like to be a Muslim New Yorker in the years immediately post 9/11.
“I was here in New York leading a lot of the work in the aftermath of 9/11 around the defense of our communities, which included Muslims, but also a lot of people that were just perceived to be Muslim, including a lot of Sikh and Latino community members who were either attacked, criminalized, or detained and rounded up,” said Ahmed.
In October 2024, DRUM Beats officially endorsed Mamdani’s campaign, citing his vision to improve the lives of working-class New Yorkers.
In the over 20 years since 9/11, Ahmed said Islamophobia has reduced gradually in the city. But over the past few weeks, the amount of Islamophobic rhetoric he has witnessed — including Cuomo’s comment — has brought a familiar fear back up to the surface.
“It was alarming to see a former governor utilizing such rhetoric which could, and is, putting people at risk,” said Ahmed, who called Cuomo’s comment an “attempt to weaponize that sort of fear mongering.”
A day after Cuomo’s remark, Mamdani responded in a video statement: “For as long as we have lived, we have known that no matter what anyone says, there are still certain forms of hate acceptable in this city today,” Mamdani said. “Islamophobia is not seen as inexcusable.”
When Ali Mazhar, a 59-year-old Pakistani American, heard of Cuomo’s interview on the conservative radio show, he found it both absurd and deeply troubling.
“This guy is just using racism and Islamophobia,” said Mazhar, who runs a clothing store in Diversity Plaza, a bustling immigrant-rich pedestrian neighborhood in Queens.
“It makes me unsafe, because this is going to promote and generate more hatred and more Islamophobia,” he told Documented.
Shahana Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the New York City Council, told Documented that Cuomo’s comment “brought so many Muslims back to 9/11.”
“I was a 10-year-old [then],” recalls Hanif, who has endorsed Mamdani for mayor. “Many young Muslims have grown up in the shadows of 9/11 seeing our families racially profiled and discriminated against, put into solitary confinement, just detained, not convicted.”
The Scale of Hate
If he were to win, Mamdani, the Democratic frontrunner and would become NYC’s first Muslim mayor. As the election drew near, he has become a political lightning rod, drawing a spike in Islamophobic attacks. CSOH data shows that October alone saw an increase in Islamophobic posts of more than 450% compared with September. Additionally, nearly four in every ten accounts spreading Islamophobic or xenophobic content were verified blue-tick users, creating almost half of all original posts.
The over 35,000 original posts on X which were categorized as Islamophobic collectively received 7.37 million likes and 2.01 million reposts on X.
“What we are witnessing around NYC Mayoral elections is part of a growing ecosystem of dehumanizing rhetoric against Muslims that has taken deep root in American public life,” Naik said.
Also Read: Cuomo’s Outreach to South Asians Shadowed by Far-Right Anti-Muslim Ties
The attacks related to Mamdani being a Muslim immigrant have seemingly deepened his support among members of the Muslim community in New York. At a Mamdani rally on Saturday, primarily aimed at Muslim and South Asian voters in the immigrant-heavy neighborhood of Jamaica in Queens, hundreds of community members showed up with palpable enthusiasm.
Speaking to the crowd, Mamdani addressed the attacks head on. “I know looking out into this crowd, there are many here today who are Muslim New Yorkers just like me, who have been made to feel as if they should be ashamed of their faith.”
Then Mamdani took aim at his opponents. “As those like Andrew Cuomo and Eric Adams realize that the only thing they’ve ever cared about, power, is slipping away, they will become more desperate,” he said. “They will engage in attacks that are more hateful, more racist, and more bigoted than we have seen in our city’s politics in quite some time. And our answer to that is a vision of a city where all of us belong.”
