Zohran Mamdani has a hard time keeping it together when he thinks about 9/11 and its aftermath.
Not — judging by his performance the other day — when he contemplates the impact of two screaming jetliners on the Twin Towers; nor when he remembers the sacrifice of hundreds of courageous firefighters that day; nor when he thinks about the toxic, smoldering ruins where there had once been a thriving commercial center.
No, the front-running candidate for New York City mayor loses it when he recalls how someone may have looked askance at his hijab-wearing aunt.
Or so would he have us believe.
In giving remarks about supposedly rampant Islamophobia in the closing days of the race, Mamdani paused — seemingly overcome with emotion — when he recalled that his aunt gave up riding the train after 9/11 for fear of her safety.
Mamdani has since clarified that the woman was really his dad’s cousin, not his aunt, but the narrative is more important than the facts.
The candidate is attempting to end his campaign as a victim, both as a shield against charges that he’s an antisemite and as a way to discredit his opponents and press his case that America is a racist society.
It’s extraordinary that not even 25 years later, New York City is about to go from a mayor, in Rudy Giuliani, who warned of the dire threat of Islamic terrorism to a mayor, in Zohran Mamdani, who warns of the dire threat of Islamophobia.
The city is about to go from a mayor who understood the stakes of a civilizational battle to a mayor who thinks the civilizational battle is all about addressing America’s own perfidy and hatred.
One mayor saw his career revivified by a crisis, while the other will — if he delivers on his agenda — create a crisis.
There was, of course, ignorance and malice directed at Muslims after 9/11.
But FBI statistics show that in the decade after the attacks, Muslims suffered hate crimes at a lower rate than blacks, gays or Jews.
The idea that, as Mamdani said in his remarks, Muslims have to live in the shadows in New York City, or that Islamophobia is just part of the background noise of our political life, or that he himself has been abashed about his status as a Muslim man is absurd.
You have to look pretty hard to find any residual effects of Islamophobia on the son of a Columbia University professor and Oscar-nominated filmmaker, who graduated from the prestigious Bronx High School of Science and the elite Bowdoin College, before becoming a state assemblyman at age 29 and the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor at age 33.
If this is what Islamophobia looks like, everyone should welcome having some sectarian hatred directed their way.
Mamdani complains of the harsh attacks by his opponents. What else, though, should be expected at the end of a high-stakes campaign?
The rhetorical sallies against Mamdani are fundamentally driven by his extremist statements and radical associations, rather than his faith.
Does Mamdani really believe that a Christian candidate who didn’t accept the existence of Israel as a Jewish state, who smeared Israel’s conduct of the Gaza war, and who refused to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada” would skate?
Certainly, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene comes in for heavy criticism for her anti-Israel views, and no one can claim that it’s anti-Muslim sentiment at work.
At the end of the day, one of the most glaring problems with Mamdani is that, ideology aside, he is light as a feather.
His callow and self-dramatizing Islamophobia speech, full of faux eloquence and stirring resolve over nothing, is a case in point.
Ed Koch, a different kind of mayor in a different time, said after he lost a re-election bid, “The people have spoken . . . and they must be punished.”
In turning to Zohran Mamdani, New Yorkers are preparing to re-acquaint themselves with Koch’s wisdom.
X: @RichLowry