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NEW YORK — The 25th anniversary of the September 11 attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon in Virginia by al-Qaida operatives could not have arrived at a more loaded moment for America. Along with falling on the first night of the Jewish New Year, Rosh HaShana, the sombre, quarter-century milestone took place Friday as the role of Islam — and particularly Islamic extremism — occupy an increasingly oversized space in U.S. politics.
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Call it the “Mamdani effect” — and not the one which has helped usher in a slew of Democratic socialist candidates across both New York City and the entire nation following the election of New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani last November. But rather the impact of the city’s first Muslim mayor, who’s made elevating his faith a personal passion, if not a priority — matched in its fervour only by his equally vocal disdain for Zionism, Israel and Israel’s embattled Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
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Make no mistake, the issue with Mamdani is not his faith, but rather his fanaticism. As Abe Greenwald wrote on Wednesday in Commentary Magazine, Mamdani is not guilty of extremism simply by association — it’s that so many of his associates happen to be extremists. And this includes many, like streamer-provocateur Hassan Piker, who’ve openly cheered the 2001 attacks by al-Qaida, along with men such as Ramzi Kassem — who for nearly a decade defended the Saudi al-Qaeda operative Ahmed Al-Darbi, only for Kassem to be made Chief Counsel by Mamdani mere hours after the mayor was inaugurated in January.
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No wonder over 100,000 family members of September 11 victims signed a petition this summer demanding Mamdani be kept away from the memorial events in Lower Manhattan. The mayor, unsurprisingly, refused to listen — turning what should have been a moment of reverence and solemnity into a personal and political agenda-op for a mayor who never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity to say or do or believe in the right thing.
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Mamdani was hardly alone at the memorial on Friday, but he was among the largest egos on the dais. That’s because America’s most grandiose political ego, President Donald Trump, stuck close to Washington today, headlining the commemoration at the Pentagon, where he unsurprisingly tied the legacy of 9/11 with his unresolved — and increasingly costly — stalemate in Iran.
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Instead, Vice-President JD Vance represented the administration in Lower Manhattan, which was actually even more fraught and problematic. Protocol has always insisted that no September 11 speech ever skew political. But Vance — already jockeying for his rightful place on the 2028 presidential ballot — has made politicizing Muslims and the Middle East one of his latest obsessions.