Courtesy of JNS. Photo credit: Michael Appleton/Mayoral Photography Office
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani hosts iftar with creators at City Hall, March 10, 2026
(JNS) — Zohran Mamdani, mayor of New York City, told city workers at an iftar, the evening meal that breaks the daily fast during Ramadan, which he held at the Museum of the City of New York on Mar. 12, that “for nearly as long as there has been a New York City, there have been Muslim New Yorkers.”
“And yet for nearly just as long, those with power and platform have sought to dehumanize us,” he said.
The mayor acknowledged Muslim leaders who were present from the New York City Council, the city’s Civic Engagement Commission, the Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs, the Mayor’s Office of Faith-Based Partnerships, Chief Counsel’s Office and Office of Administrative Services, as well as the director of the Mayor’s Office of Management and Budget, who he said is “a man lovingly known as ‘Money Mufti.’”
He told the leaders and city workers that Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.) posted a picture of him holding an iftar in City Hall alongside an image of 9/11 and wrote “the enemy is inside the gates.” (The senator later wrote that “to be clear, I didn’t ‘suggest’ Islamists are the enemy. I said it plainly.”)
Mamdani added that Rep. Brandon Gill (R-Texas) called the iftar he held “stomach churning, truly repulsive,” and “Vicky Paladino, a City Council member from Queens — someone who works in the same building that I do, in the same building as our council members here — reposted a tweet that also invoked 9/11, the worst terrorist attack that our city has ever faced and included the phrase: ‘Yes, the terrorists won.’”
Mamdani said he thinks of “the smaller indignities — the indignities that many New Yorkers face but that Muslims are expected to face in silence.”
“Of the exhaustion of having to explain yourself to those who are not interested in understanding. Of the men who introduce themselves by their given name only to be called ‘Muhammad’ for years on end,” he said. “Of the city workers who work 12-hour shifts only to check their phone and find an elected official in that same city is called for their expulsion.”
“It is together that we find ease. It is together that we do so in solidarity,” he said. “And we find it in the city that is our home.”
“I stand here proud in front of you as the first Muslim mayor in our city’s history,” he added.
‘You’re not fooling anybody’
Earlier in the day, Mamdani, who has said that he would have the Israeli prime minister arrested in New York City and who declined to decry the statement “from the river to the sea,” released a statement about a car ramming and shooting at a Reform temple near Detroit.
“The attack on Temple Israel in West Bloomfield, Mich., is horrifying. My thoughts are with the congregation and all who are shaken by this act of antisemitic violence,” he stated. “I am continuing to closely monitor the situation. Out of an abundance of caution, the NYPD will continue to deploy high-visibility patrols to Jewish religious and cultural institutions across the five boroughs.”
The mayor, who drew criticism from Jewish groups earlier in the week for hosting an antisemitic activist at Gracie Mansion and who has sought to distance himself from his wife’s apparent support of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks in Israel, was denounced for the statement on the attack in Michigan.
“This is what ‘globalize the intifada’ means, something you and your wife expressly support,” stated Jason Bedrick, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation.
“When there are terrorist attacks in the U.S. by extremists, I’d prefer that the same politicians and podcasters who egg them on then try to act surprised or sympathetic when these attacks happen,” stated Dave Portnoy, the Jewish founder of Barstool Sports.
“It’s insulting, and you’re not fooling anybody,” Portnoy said. “Give me the straightforward hatred rather than the hypocrisy. An incredible two-step of hanging out with people who call for Jews to be killed but then tweeting how shocked and sad he is when Jews are attacked,” wrote Jon Levine, a reporter for The Washington Free Beacon.
