Twenty-five years after Islamic terrorists murdered 2,977 Americans, The New York Times has found a new angle on the September 11th anniversary: the real victims, according to the paper of record, are Muslims.
The Times published coverage framing New York City’s first Muslim mayor, Mamdani, as facing unfair “Islamophobia” and “added layer of pressure and scrutiny” as the city commemorates the deadliest terrorist attack on American soil. The paper quotes Husein Yatabarry, executive director of the Muslim Community Network, claiming “there’s a right-wing angst to bring back that level of Islamophobia against prominent Muslims in political life or even in regular daily life.”
But the Times conveniently glosses over why New Yorkers might have legitimate concerns about Mamdani’s role in memorial services.
Mamdani publicly praised Imam Siraj Wahhaj as “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community.” That same imam testified as a character witness for Omar Abdel Rahman, who was convicted of planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Wahhaj also fundraised for the legal defense of El Sayyid Nosair, convicted of seditious conspiracy in connection with that terror attack.
There’s more. Mamdani has associated with and shared an Eid dinner with leftist streamer Hasan Piker, who infamously declared that “America deserved 9/11.”
Then there’s the mayor’s father, Mahmood Mamdani. In his 2004 book “Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror,” he wrote that suicide bombers should not be considered barbaric. “We need to recognize the suicide bomber, first and foremost, as a category of soldier,” the passage reads. “Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism.”
These aren’t minor associations. These are direct connections to individuals who defended terrorists and rhetoric that excused the very attack being memorialized.
Yet the Times frames any objection to Mamdani’s prominent role in 9/11 commemorations as simple bigotry. Writers Maya King and Jeffrey C. Mays describe the mayor as someone who “must speak about Sept. 11 as the city’s top elected official, but also as a member of a religious group that has faced hostility and suspicion since the attacks, and is still being vilified by right-wing factions of the Republican Party.”
Mamdani was nine years old on September 11, 2001, having moved to America from Uganda just two years prior. He has called the attacks “a horrific tragedy for all Americans and one where a Muslim like him was officially marked as an ‘other.'”
The Times doubled down on its narrative with additional coverage. King authored another piece titled “After 9/11, Islamophobia Shaped a Generation of Muslim New Yorkers.”
For the families who lost fathers, mothers, sons, daughters, brothers, and sisters that terrible morning, the suggestion that Muslims are the primary victims of 9/11 is a bitter pill. Nearly 3,000 innocent people were slaughtered by 19 Islamic terrorists. Countless families have lived with that loss every day for a quarter century.
