Crossing the line? Islamophobia marks the NYC mayoral race

With Election Day around the corner, New York City's mayoral race swerved heavily into islamophobic rhetoric over the past several days with Republicans taking serious shots at mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani because of his Muslim identity.

- By ARIAMA C. LONG Amsterdam News Staff

The height of the city’s rash of islamophobia and hostility to New Yorkers who were visibly Muslim was after the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attack. Since then, the same climate of fear and vitriol targeting Muslim New Yorkers has cropped up from time to time as a political tactic. This has been a constant issue for Mamdani’s campaign since his launch last year.

“We know that in the city, a presumption of innocence is oftentimes only afforded to some,” said Mamdani at a sitdown roundtable with Black media on Friday, Oct. 24. “And this is also amidst the last 48 hours, which have come with some of the most shameful examples of islamophobia, racism, and bigotry that we've seen in this city’s recent political history.”

According to a report from the city’s Office for the Prevention of Hate Crimes (OPHC), there was a dip in hate crime complaints by 3% from 2023 to 2024. Even so, anti-Muslim hate crimes experienced a 69% increase. Additionally, anti-Jewish hate crimes have the highest number of complaints from 2024, followed by anti-LGBTQ, anti-Black, and anti-Asian complaints, said the report.