There is a strategic reason why controversy surrounds Zohran Mamdani during the week of the 25th anniversary of the 9/11 radical Islamic terrorist attacks on America. It’s not just because he’s an attention-seeking, spoiled child of privilege with an ego bigger than Barack Hussein Obama’s. Though all of that is certainly true.
Mamdani is following the Islamic public relations playbook that’s been in place since those attacks, but it’s only emerged from the shadows in more recent years. The end game of said playbook is to conquer the West and to make it completely clear that the new subordinates of Islam know they have been conquered and who did it. They are seeking the complete and total surrender of Western culture. As my esteemed colleague on these matters Robert Spencer often notes, they are playing the long game.
This is why you see large groups of Islamists pulling out prayer rugs on city streets, in airplanes, and wherever non-Muslims gather.
Scenes like these used to be completely foreign to London, but after 10 years of having a ‘progressive’ Muslim mayor, they are now part of daily life.
— Dr. Maalouf (@realMaalouf) November 4, 2025
This is what people in New York can expect if Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor:
Mass prayers everywhere
Loud calls for prayer… pic.twitter.com/8PwwKoygGS
The strategic message behind all of this is to tell you, especially you Christians and Jews, that you are being conquered. It’s to demoralize you into giving up the fight even before there is one.
Normally, when a politician is trying to advance an unpopular agenda, he or she will be very covert about it so that they can achieve the desired result before anyone is wise to what they are doing. This is most common when you see all that pork thrown into legislation, or when you see Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.D.) consistently defy his own party and the Republican president without ever engaging in debate or having a head-on confrontation with the people he’s screwing. Thune is old school in that way.
Radical Islamic politicians like Mamdani, Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.) are different. They seek out that confrontation. They seem to want it to be abundantly clear that they are the ones leading the way to take down America and American culture at every turn. They want credit from the only people who matter to them, and it’s not everyday Americans; it’s not Jews or Christians.
Something the Islamic politicians do routinely is to reiterate common and acceptable “American” messaging up front and then add the radical Islamic dog whistling at the end. This is designed to make sure the people who count most to them know what they really mean and know that they weren’t afraid to go on record and say it. Meanwhile, American useful idiots on the left and in the middle only hear the deceptive messaging up front.
A good example of this is a social media post from Abdul El-Sayed on Sept. 11, 2021. This was long before his current bid to become a senator. The Washington Times reported that El-Sayed wrote: “Today, I mourn the 3K lives, 6K injuries, & infrastructural devastation in NYC, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my faith. Tomorrow, I’ll mourn 1M lives, millions of injuries, & infrastructural devastation in 3 countries, perpetuated ignorantly in the name of my country.”
He drew a moral equivalence between the murderous acts of his fellow radical Islamists and America’s efforts to defend itself from Islamic terrorism. Does the U.S. get it right all of the time? Of course not. Many of us on the conservative side cheered on those campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now we feel a bit differently about exactly what George W. Bush and Barack Obama were doing all those years.
But that’s not what El-Sayed was actually talking about. His perspective is mostly rooted in an Islamic-based hatred for Western, Judeo-Christian culture, I believe.
While I’m no expert on Islam or the Quran, even I am somewhat familiar with the part of the Quran that is often quoted as permitting deception of non-Muslims as a means to an end. More to the point, the Middle East Forum explains a particular section of the Quran (3:28), where this is discussed:
Al-Tabari’s (838-923 AD) Tafsir, or Quranic exegeses, is essentially a standard reference in the entire Muslim world. Regarding 3:28, he wrote: ‘If you [Muslims] are under their [infidels’] authority, fearing for yourselves, behave loyally to them, with your tongue, while harbouring inner animosity for them... Allah has forbidden believers from being friendly or on intimate terms with the infidels in place of believers – except when infidels are above them [in authority]. In such a scenario, let them act friendly towards them.’
In other words, if Muslims are not the authority — or in a democracy, if they are a minority — then it’s OK to act loyally and be friendly “while harbouring inner animosity for them.”
This is how, on the 25th anniversary of those disgusting attacks on America, you have a Muslim mayor of New York signing an executive order that’s supposed to honor the victims and their families of 9/11, but somehow he finds a way to honor a lawyer for an al-Qaeda member. Something like this only happens if you want people to notice. Something like this only happens if your strategy is reliant on the public noticing.
Following a 9/11 Executive Order signing, Mamdani hands the ceremonial pen to a lawyer who represented Al-Qaeda terrorists: pic.twitter.com/IOet76NR6o
— TheBlaze (@theblaze) September 9, 2026
After the signing, Mamdani gave the pen to his police commissioner, Jessica Tisch, and he very publicly told her to hand it over to his chief legal counsel, Ramzi Kassem. Kassem had previously represented Ahmed al-Darbi, who was convicted of war crimes in connection with al-Qaeda plots against commercial ships. He was the brother-in-law of Khalid al-Mihdhar, one of the hijackers on board American Airlines Flight 77, which crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11. Talk about rubbing salt in the still very open wounds of those 9/11 victims’ families.
Is it any wonder they don’t want him anywhere near them on 9/11?
Mamdani is interjecting himself into this 25th anniversary week for a few reasons. First, because he can. As the mayor of New York, he’s in a unique position to insert himself any way he sees fit into the 9/11 events. When you have a radical Islamic mayor, the rules change, and this year they did. The families do not want anyone there who might seek to minimize what 9/11 means to them and to all Americans who remember that day and what it did to this country.
9/11 families are pleading with NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani to stay away from the 25th anniversary memorial ceremony at the World Trade Center.
— Fox News (@FoxNews) September 8, 2026
Over 100,000 others have joined them, signing a petition calling for Mamdani to keep his distance on the solemn anniversary.
Organizers… pic.twitter.com/xajRViK4oc
When you have people who have no political agenda, other than to use a specific date and a certain space to honor the memory of their loved ones, holding press events to tell you not to attend their event, it’s time to take a hint. But that’s not what Mamdani is doing. He’s doing the opposite. He’s taking their personal grief and shoving it right back in their faces by ignoring their wishes.
He knows what he’s doing. He’s not doing this for attention or for his ego. He’s certainly not doing it to honor the memory of the victims of radical Islamic terror. He’s doing it to make an example of them for all to see. He’s demonstrating that he can force these families to cave to him and his faith.
He’s conquering this sacred, symbolic American event and making it his own. In the process, he’s taking it away from the families and claiming it for Islam. Mamdani has doubled down and said he will attend New York's commemoration of 9/11 in spite of those families’ objections.
On the tactic of the two-part "sound bite," where the second part undermines the first, Mamdani’s a pro at this. On Sept. 11, 2023, he posted on X:
Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers died on 9/11; 22 years later, the death hasn't stopped.
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) September 11, 2023
We mourn our neighbors who died that day. The hundreds of thousands who died in the wars that followed. The unknown millions injured & displaced.
In their memory, we work toward a better world.
He devoted seven words of that post to the victims of those Islamic terrorists. He followed that with 41 words that reframed the issue to make Islam the real victim.
His 2024 post on the anniversary followed the same script.
Nearly 3,000 New Yorkers died on 9/11.
— Zohran Kwame Mamdani (@ZohranKMamdani) September 11, 2024
We mourn our neighbors who died that day. The countless first responders and families whose lives were forever changed. The millions who suffered in the wars that followed.
In their memory, we work toward a better world.
On Oct. 25, 2025, while running for mayor, Mamdani decided to make 9/11 about him. He said, "Growing up in the shadow of 9/11, I have known what it means to live with an undercurrent of suspicion in this city. I will always remember the disdain that I faced, the way that my name could immediately become Muhammad, and how I could return to my city only to be asked in a double-mirrored room at the airport if I had any plan on attacking it."
The truth is, he was a child of privilege. How many marginalized kids have had their smiling photos taken with Jeffrey Epstein, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos?
🔴IN THE PHOTO.
— EQUALIZER3 (Eduardo G) (@egtegain) February 2, 2026
Epstein, his wife, Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, and Bezos.
What was the current Mayor of NY, Zohran Mamdani, doing as a child with his mother, surrounded by that gang of...?👇 pic.twitter.com/kODtgSDE8E
Something tells me his claims of marginalization may be a bit exaggerated.
And yet, the Ugandan-born New York mayor has found a way to portray himself as just an everyday, victimized Muslim who overcame bigotry and prejudice, but now he’s going to make a statement — not just for himself, but for all of Islam. And he’s going to do it this week on this anniversary, and there’s nothing you can do about it.
Something like that, he probably thinks, is a battle won for his team. But that sort of hubris is the Achilles' heel for his ilk. In his culture, where dominance and the exertion of physical and intellectual power over others are all that matter, there is a blind spot.
In Western culture, and more particularly in the U.S., you can try to demonstrate that sort of power, but you really don’t have it, and we all know this. You can only force Americans to put up with something they don’t like for so long, and then they will respond.
From the outset, New Yorkers and people across the country have not wanted Mamdani to be any part of the 9/11 commemoration, and yet he insists, to his own detriment. The backlash against him will be fierce, and it will likely carry over to other leftists in the midterms. Exactly how much remains to be seen.
Mamdani could possibly be giving a gift to Republicans this week by reminding the American people that the Democrats, the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), and the party’s radical Islamic politicians don’t care at all about what Americans want, what’s good for them, or what's good for the country.
For everyone’s sake, he should avoid the 9/11 events, but like so many on his side, he just can’t help himself. He’s about to discover, for the first time, the political wrath of the everyday American, and because of his own arrogance, it will catch him by surprise.
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