Investigative Update Summer 2025
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Anti-Muslim and hard-right activists used Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign and subsequent election as mayor of New York City to spread racist misinformation and bigoted conspiracy theories. Many progressive activists viewed Mamdani’s historic victory as the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor as a triumph of pluralism. Anti-Muslim groups, in contrast, suggested that the practicing Muslim and progressive politician’s victory signaled the downfall not only of the city, but the country.
The hate perpetuated by anti-Muslim groups and figures that continues after Mamdani’s election fits into a larger project of religious and racialized fearmongering pushed by the organized anti-Muslim movement since its emergence after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Then, as now, anti-Muslim activists coalesced around New York City as the focal point for their bigoted and hateful misinformation campaigns, which promote a hard-right war of civilizations in which Muslims are deemed enemies of white Christian America.
After Mamdani, a New York State Assembly member, beat former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic mayoral primary in June, anti-Muslim figures began churning out rhetoric vilifying him and the people of New York who supported his campaign. Anti-Muslim hate group leader Brigitte Gabriel took to X on June 24 saying, “The Mayor of New York City will most likely end up being Zohran Mamdani. Sharia Law will be coming to the United States. We must do everything to stop it.” Sharia, also spelled Shariah, is Islamic law that anti-Muslim figures claim is being forcibly — and sometimes unknowingly — imposed on those in the United States and broader West. Anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller posted on X that New York Democrats elected “a jihadi socialist who wants to globalize the intifada, globalize 9/11, and believes capitalism is a danger.”
The anti-Muslim movement remains a political force in the United States. It receives support from right-wing politicians, who opportunistically use anti-Muslim bias to … enhance draconian national security policies and racist immigration infrastructures.”
On July 2, Jamie Glazov invited anti-Muslim hate group leader Robert Spencer to his online hate program The Glazov Gang to opine about how Mamdani’s victory represents the “suicide of the west.” Spencer responded that, along with Mamdani’s alleged socialist policies, there will be a “rise in the jihad activity” in New York and that, as a Shia Muslim, Mamdani will not have a problem with it. Spencer said this will cause the city’s wealthy and those who prefer safety to flee, and he predicted that Mamdani is likely to “build a wall to keep all the people in who are going to be fleeing.” Spencer added that Mamdani is unlikely to be able to build a wall fast enough to prevent an exodus, and that the “city will be destroyed and the only people left in it will be the criminals and the jihadis and the people who are too impoverished to leave.” On June 25, Spencer went further on his hate blog Jihad Watch, claiming that “Mamdani’s victory is an indication of how much of a victory 9/11 was for the global jihad.”
9/11 gives rise to anti-Muslim bigotry
Anti-Muslim bigotry is not a new concept in the United States. Until 9/11, however, anti-Muslim ideology — which is generally characterized by nativist and anti-pluralist attacks on Muslims and false conspiracy theories about Muslims being threats to the nation and to democracy — was not a core organizing principle of any one sector of the hard right. That changed after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, when extremists associated with al-Qaida killed nearly 3,000 people in a series of attacks on targets that included the World Trade Center in New York City. The horrific attacks gave rise to a cottage industry of disinformation peddlers who vilified and demonized Islam and its adherents. Led by anti-Muslim hate figures like Spencer and Gabriel, it has blossomed into a movement of interconnected groups and figures disciplined in their messaging to frame Islam as a subversive threat to the U.S.
The hate group ACT for America has lost a significant number of chapters, and the hate group Understanding the Threat shuttered due to legal and financial troubles. In 2024, only 31 active anti-Muslim hate groups operated in the country.
However, the anti-Muslim movement remains a political force in the United States. It receives support from right-wing politicians, who opportunistically use anti-Muslim bias to justify intrusions into Americans’ privacy and enhance draconian national security policies and racist immigration infrastructures. Conservative media bubbles also frequently make Islam a political punching bag and frame the U.S. Muslim community as suspicious interlopers. The institutions associated with white Christian nationalism also support the anti-Muslim movement by characterizing Islam and all other non-Christian religions as incompatible with white American culture.
New York City’s ‘ground zero mosque’
In 2010, a campaign to smear the construction of the Park51 Islamic center, a 13-story mosque and community center in New York City’s lower Manhattan, crystalized the modern anti-Muslim movement. At that time, Geller, riding the cresting wave of anti-Muslim sentiment building around the country, joined forces with Spencer to protest the mosque and solidify their place among the organized anti-Muslim movement. Geller and Spencer formed the Stop Islamization of Nations network and made what they dubbed the “ground zero mosque” a national flash point in the country. Geller and Spencer led protests and produced content vilifying Park51 as a “triumphal monument” built on “conquered land.”
Tom Trento of the anti-Muslim hate group The United West, who joined Geller and Spencer in 2010 opposing the Park51 Islamic center, published a video on Aug. 19 vilifying Mamdani and his campaign. “The ground zero mosque was inevitable,” Trento said. “We stopped it. Well, we have another problem. And this problem may occur on November 4, 2025. We have an individual running for the mayor of New York named Zohran Mamdani.”
Trento added, “If he becomes mayor, there won’t be one ground zero mosque. There’ll be numbers of ground zero mosques, and the call to prayer will come from every way over that hallowed ground. Well, The United West cannot stand by and watch.”
Their model spread and resulted in obstructionist campaigns to prevent dozens of Islamic community centers across the country from opening. Fifteen years later, Geller, Spencer and their allies again set their sights on stirring up anti-Muslim animosity in New York City during Mamdani’s campaign.
Mayor-elect Mamdani
On Nov. 4, Mamdani was elected New York’s 111th mayor. The same anti-Muslim animosity that met his campaign followed his victory. In a Nov. 4 Substack post, longtime anti-Muslim figurehead Frank Gaffney claimed Mamdani “may prove to be a horseman of the apocalypse.” He wrote of Mamdani’s faith, “[H]is strain of Islam is a Shiite death-cult whose adherents — notably, the ‘12er’ leaders of Iran — believe they must cause apocalyptic destruction now to prompt their messiah violently to achieve Muslim rule worldwide.”
John Guandolo, who previously ran the anti-Muslim hate group Understanding the Threat, posted on X after Mamdani’s win, “Another American city lost to jihadis.”
Gabriel also took to X, writing, “I am devastated for New York City. Just 24 years after September 11th and they elect someone who supports the terrorists who flew planes into the World Trade Centers. New York City has forgotten.”
FrontPage Magazine, housed under the hate group David Horowitz Freedom Center, published an article on June 25 that pushed election fraud narratives and claimed Mamdani’s primary win to be “dubious” and likely illegitimate and stolen. “It wouldn’t be the first time an election was stolen in the city,” wrote author Daniel Greenfield. “It won’t be the last. But it’s probably the first time it was stolen, not just by Communists, but by Islamic terrorists.”
On Nov. 6, two days after the election win, Greenfield posted another article on FrontPage Magazine that used demographic alarmism to explain Mamdani’s win. “New York City, the one people imagine from movies, no longer exists,” Greenfield wrote. He explained in the piece and charts that Mamdani’s win was due to changing demographics of the city and replacement of old Jewish, Italian and Irish New Yorkers by non-English speakers, single and secular people, certain immigrants and young people. Greenfield wrote, “So much for New York City being the ‘most Jewish city’ in America. Or ‘Italian city’. Like so many European cities, it’s been redefined by waves of Muslim mass migration.”
Greenfield finished with, “Mamdani’s defeat of Andrew Cuomo, Curtis Sliwa and Eric Adams, all personalities dating back to an older New York City, the city of the 80s and 90s, marked the defeat of old New York City by a ‘new’ New York City. This city has no character, no tradition and no roots. It’s interchangeable with every upscale gentrified city in America and all across Europe. This Neo-New York could just as easily be London or Toronto. It has no past and no future. Like Mamdani, it’s not part of America, and is open to being colonized by any group with organization, determination and a mission.”
What it means
Following 9/11, the anti-Muslim movement opportunistically demonized Muslims, Arab Americans and immigrants and twisted tragic events to build an organized movement that spread a hateful agenda. The case of Mamdani is another example of this ongoing effort and shows how other factions of the hard right opportunistically exploit bigotry to achieve their goals.
Image at top: A campaign flyer for Zohran Mamdani, then a candidate for mayor of New York City, is displayed June 6, 2025, at an Eid service and prayer at the Parkchester Islamic Center in the Bronx. Mamdani won the election on Nov. 4, 2025. (Credit: Shuran Huang/The New York Times/Redux)