Socialist New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani lamented on Friday that — after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on the United States — his Muslim aunt could no longer take the subway because she wore a hijab.
Mamdani made the comment while delivering a speech on Islamophobia in front of a mosque one day before early voting begins for the heated NYC mayor’s race. The speech focused on condemning attacks against him from his opponents, Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa, that he claims are “racist” and “baseless.” During the speech on Islamophobia, Mamdani fought back tears when he talked about his aunt.
“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” he said.
The remark unintentionally evoked the famous Norm Macdonald quip, when the late comedian said, “What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?”
He did the meme. https://t.co/pb3KIRMI3J pic.twitter.com/le7xEG1fNa
— Jeremy Redfern (@JeremyRedfernFL) October 24, 2025
Later during the speech, Mamdani spoke about his own experience as a Muslim and again brought up 9/11.
“Growing up in the shadow of 9/11, I have known what it means to live with an undercurrent of suspicion in this city,” he said, adding, “To be Muslim in New York is to expect indignity, but indignity does not make us distinct. There are many New Yorkers who face it. It is the tolerance of that indignity that does.”
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On Thursday, Mamdani called an exchange between Cuomo and a conservative radio host “disgusting” after they discussed what a terror attack on New York City would look like with Mamdani leading the city.
“God forbid another 9/11, can you imagine Mamdani in the seat?” Cuomo asked.
“Yeah, I could,” replied radio host Sid Rosenberg. “He’d be cheering.”
Cuomo chuckled and then responded, saying, “That’s another problem.”
Mamdani decried the exchange, saying that Cuomo “in his final moments in public life is engaging in rhetoric that is not only Islamophobic, not only racist, is also disgusting, and is his final closing argument with less than two weeks before Election Day.”
Mamdani, who is pushing a socialist platform, has long taken strong anti-Israel positions, such as advocating for boycotting Israeli institutions. Mamdani, who was once a rap artist, praised men in a song who were convicted in the United States of providing material support to Hamas.
During his speech on Friday, the socialist mayoral candidate said that recent “racist” attacks on him have shown him that he was “wrong” for thinking that he could become more than his faith.
“I thought that if I behaved well enough or bit my tongue enough in the face of racist, baseless attacks, all while returning back to my central message, it would allow me to be more than just my faith,” Mamdani added. “I was wrong. No amount of redirection is ever enough.”
