Kamal Ghorui
New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani reacted to the barrage of hate that he received after he hosted his first iftar at New York City Hall. Mamdani was called the enemy inside and in reply, the first Muslim mayor of NYC said there should be similar outrage from politicians in Washington when kids go hungry. “Let there be as much outrage from politicians in Washington when kids go hungry as there is when I break bread with New Yorkers,” Mamdani wrote, reacting to Alabama Senator Tommy Tuberville’s post: “The enemy is inside the gates.”Mamdani’s hosting of the iftar where he invited community members and was seen breaking the fast sitting on the floor, turned into a meme as trolls compared the photo with 9/11. New York Senator Chuck Schumer came to Mamdani’s defense and called out Tuberville’s Islamophobia. “This is mindless hate. Muslim Americans are cops, doctors, nurses, teachers, bankers, bricklayers, mothers, fathers, neighbors, mayors, and more. Islamophobic hate like this is fundamentally un-American and we must confront and overcome it whenever it rears its ugly head,” Schumer wrote. MAGA activist Laura Loomer also alleged that one of the guests at Mamdani’s iftar gathering made an ISIS finger salute. “A Muslim who was invited to the NYC Mayoral Residence by @ZohranKMamdani for a Ramadan iftar yesterday flashed the ISIS one finger salute inside Gracie Mansion. This comes after 2 ISIS terrorists threw a bomb at Americans in NYC this weekend,” Loomer posted.Before this iftar gathering, Mamdani was criticized for hosting Palestinian activist Mahmoud Khalil and his family for a dinner, marking the one-year anniversary of Khalil’s arrest. “A year ago, Mahmoud was walking home through our city after sharing an iftar with his wife Noor when he was detained by federal agents, flown to Louisiana, and then held in an ICE facility for months. In that time, he was forced to miss the birth of his first child. All of this for exercising his First Amendment rights in protesting the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” Mamdani wrote. “Mahmoud is a New Yorker, and he belongs in New York City.”
