September 11: Giuliani attacks Mamdani and equates his Muslim faith with Al-Qaeda terrorists

A few days before the September 11 commemorations, Rudy Giuliani chose to highlight one of the most vile sources of post-2001 Islamophobia: assimilating a Muslim political leader to Al-Qaeda terrorists because of his religion. Guest of Newsmax on September 6, the former mayor of New York estimated that Zohran Mamdani should not attend the ceremonies of the 25th anniversary of the attacks at Ground Zero. “It offends me that he’s coming,” he said.

But Giuliani went much further. He drew a parallel between the mayor’s Muslim faith and the ideology of the perpetrators of the attacks, going so far as to suggest that Mamdani was concealing his true intentions. An Islamophobic offensive of staggering brutality. Giuliani here criticizes neither a political decision nor the mayor’s record: he casts suspicion on an elected official because he is Muslim and reactivates the amalgamation between Islam, Muslims and terrorism which has poisoned the lives of millions of Americans since September 11.

Mamdani, for his part, refused to be drawn into this escalation and confirmed his presence at the commemorations. “I am proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” he said, calling for tribute to the victims, their families and the rescuers. The contrast is all the more striking since, a few days earlier, Mamdani had officially made September 11 a “Day of Remembrance and Service” in New York. His administration also made public more than 170,000 pages of municipal archives on air quality, health risks and the authorities’ response after the attacks, documents requested for years by survivors and rescuers.

Giuliani is not alone in contesting Mamdani’s presence. A petition started by relatives of victims has garnered more than 100,000 signatures, while former Republican governor George Pataki also criticized his participation. But Giuliani goes a step further by explicitly making the mayor’s Muslim religion a reason for suspicion. Twenty-five years after the attacks, the former mayor thus recycles the most toxic things post-September 11 America has produced: guilt by association, collective suspicion and the idea that a Muslim should constantly prove his patriotism to have the right to fully belong to his own country.

The symbol is damning: the man who embodied New York after September 11 is today trying to use the memory of this tragedy to delegitimize the city’s first Muslim mayor. While Giuliani distributes the certificates of patriotism, Mamdani chooses to be at Ground Zero.