The campaign to exclude New York’s mayor from September 11 commemorations raises a question larger than his politics: can a city mourn together without agreeing on who should govern it?
New Yorkers should be able to disagree with Zohran Mamdani and stand alongside him in remembrance. Sharing a moment of silence does not mean endorsing his politics. It means recognising that the people being remembered matter more than the disagreements among those who have come to honour them.Ahead of the 25th anniversary of September 11, that distinction is becoming harder to hear. A petition opposing the mayor’s participation passed 100,000 signatures by the morning of 8 September. Some bereaved relatives delivered it to City Hall that day. Mamdani has said he will attend. [1] [2]
The objections deserve examination. Families who lost someone have every reason to care deeply about the ceremony and the conduct of public officials. Nobody should demand that they admire Mamdani or set aside concerns about his judgement. But excluding him requires a further argument. What would his absence achieve? Would it protect the ceremony’s purpose, or make political acceptance a condition of sharing in the city’s grief? Those questions matter beyond one mayor. A city can remember an atrocity without making its Muslim neighbours answer for it.
The families do not speak with one voice
The petition represents real objections, including from people whose losses are beyond dispute. It does not establish a unanimous position among bereaved families. Its total number of signatures should not be reported as the number of victims’ relatives demanding Mamdani’s exclusion. [3]
September 11th Families for Peaceful Tomorrows has explicitly supported his attendance. In a July statement, the organisation argued that he would be fulfilling the responsibility previous mayors had undertaken: standing with New Yorkers to remember those killed. It also opposed using Ground Zero for partisan politics. [4] These families are entitled to be heard alongside those asking him to stay away. Neither group’s grief becomes more authentic because its position suits a commentator’s argument.
There is something troubling about coverage that turns “the families” into a single political voice. It erases disagreement among the very people whose wishes it claims to respect. An anniversary cannot become a contest in which one group of mourners supplies the permission slip and another disappears from the story. A relative can refuse a handshake, decline a photograph or feel angry at the mayor. Their participation should never require warmth towards him. The question for the organisers is how to preserve a shared ceremony across those differences.
Attendance does not confer approval
The Memorial’s arrangements already separate official attendance from political performance: politicians do not give speeches and remain in a designated area. [5] That distinction offers a practical answer. Mamdani can attend, observe the rules and pay his respects without receiving a platform to defend his administration. Other attendees can share the space without appearing to support of him.
If a politician tried to campaign during the ceremony, interrupt the proceedings or exploit a family’s grief for publicity, organisers would have grounds to intervene. The same standard should apply regardless of party or religion. But disagreement elsewhere does not automatically amount to disruption here. A public commemoration must be able to accommodate people who oppose one another on almost everything except the need to remember the dead. Otherwise, every future anniversary invites another argument about which elected officials deserve admission. The ceremony becomes dependent on a political consensus that a city as varied as New York will rarely possess.
Keeping politics out should mean restraining what politicians do at the event. It should not require the mourners to agree with everyone standing nearby.
Criticism needs the whole record
Some objections concern Mamdani’s associations and his responses to inflammatory language. Those are legitimate subjects for scrutiny. A mayor should expect questions about the people he promotes and the language he challenges or leaves unanswered. Hasan Piker’s remark that America deserved September 11 was cruel. People whose relatives were murdered should not have to explain why. However, Mamdani condemned those remarks during the 2025 mayoral campaign, describing them as “objectionable and reprehensible”. Reporting the association while omitting that condemnation gives readers an incomplete account. [1]
The debate over “globalize the intifada” also needs its chronology. Mamdani initially resisted demands to condemn the phrase. In July 2025, he said he would discourage its use, according to reporting on his meeting with business leaders. [6] Critics can find that response inadequate. Jewish New Yorkers who hear a threat in the slogan deserve a serious hearing. Reporting the shift does not settle the disagreement; it allows the disagreement to proceed honestly.
Legal representation is not endorsement
The appointment of Ramzi Kassem as chief counsel has drawn criticism because of his past representation of a convicted al-Qaeda member. ABC reported that this was a central objection in the current dispute. [7] But legal representation is not evidence that a lawyer shares a client’s beliefs. The American Bar Association’s Model Rule 1.2(b) expressly separates representing someone from endorsing their views or activities. [8] Any claim about Kassem’s own conduct should stand on its evidence. Moving from a client’s crimes to a lawyer’s presumed sympathies, then to the mayor who hired him, does not establish what either man believes.
That standard protects the quality of the criticism as much as the person criticised. Mamdani should answer for his decisions. He should not be assigned every statement or offence associated with everyone in his orbit.
When scrutiny becomes religious suspicion
It would be wrong to assume every person opposing Mamdani’s attendance is motivated by prejudice. It would be equally wrong to ignore prejudice when a prominent opponent makes it explicit. Rudy Giuliani’s recent comments crossed that line. Forbes reported that he accused Muslims of wanting to take over and suggested Mamdani concealed an outlook comparable to that of the September 11 perpetrators. He supplied no evidence for that comparison. [1] That invites the audience to interpret Muslim identity as a warning sign. Under that logic, an elected mayor’s words and actions matter less than the suspicion attached to his faith.
Mamdani’s executive order itself calls September 11 a terrorist attack. On 7 September, he again described the killings as terror and said his focus would be the families and first responders. [7] [9] Nobody has to accept a politician’s account of his motives without question. But an accusation that survives by disregarding contrary evidence is not a useful test of sincerity. The wider danger is that other Muslim New Yorkers hear the same condition applied to themselves. They can live in the city, serve it and grieve for it, yet still find their belonging treated as provisional when the anniversary arrives.
Muslim New Yorkers are part of this history
Mohammad Salman Hamdani was a 23-year-old Muslim American emergency medical technician who died at the World Trade Center. Queens College’s account describes how, after he disappeared, some media speculation suggested he might have been involved in the attacks. His remains were recovered at Ground Zero in March 2002. [10] His story exposes what suspicion can do. A family waiting for news of a missing son also faced insinuations about whether he belonged among the victims. Remembering him should not become another demand that Muslims produce an exceptional hero to prove their worth. Ordinary people do not have to die rescuing strangers to deserve equal treatment. His life matters because it was his life, and because any honest account of September 11 must have room for people whom prejudice pushed out of view.
The backlash after the attacks was real. Human Rights Watch documented violence against Arabs, Muslims and people perceived to belong to those groups, including Sikhs and South Asians. Its investigation described assaults, threats and attacks on places of worship. [11] Acknowledging that history does not reduce the horror of the terrorist attacks. It recognises an additional wrong committed against innocent people afterwards. An anniversary should help younger generations understand both. They need to know who committed the attacks, who suffered and why blaming neighbours for a shared religion compounded the damage.
What the remembrance order actually changes
On 4 September, Mamdani signed Executive Order 21, establishing an annual Citywide Day of Remembrance and Service. It provides for moments of silence, encourages commemorative and educational activities, and promotes volunteering. It recognises victims, responders, bereaved families, survivors and the lasting effects of the attacks. [9] This did not create September 11 remembrance from nothing. The order itself acknowledges the existing national designation. Its significance is the formal organisation of the city’s own observance.
The fair question is whether the administration follows through. Will remembrance programming reach younger New Yorkers? Service opportunities should give people something useful to contribute. Agencies also need to make participation practical while maintaining essential services. An executive order cannot prove personal virtue. Nor should it be dismissed automatically because the politician signing it is unpopular with some families. Judge what it directs the government to do, then assess whether that work happens. That approach offers a more useful form of accountability than arguing indefinitely about whether the mayor looks sufficiently sincere.
Survivors need more than ceremonial arguments
On 8 September, the administration announced the release of approximately 170,000 pages of city records concerning September 11, air quality, health concerns and the government’s response. It also announced settlements of two lawsuits brought by 9/11 Health Watch. [12] The city said it would release further documents and appoint staff to help people retrieve records relevant to applications for federal health and compensation programmes. These are commitments whose delivery can be checked. [12] The records release deserves attention because survivors and advocates had sought this material across several administrations. Credit belongs to those who pursued access as well as the administration now providing it. [12]
A portal is not the end of accountability. Documents must be accessible, the promised releases must continue, and people seeking help should be able to navigate the process. The volume of material alone cannot tell us whether those needs have been met. Still, this is a concrete basis for judging the mayor’s contribution. It is reasonable to ask why the dispute over where he stands at a ceremony should overshadow scrutiny of what his government delivers afterwards. The same test should apply to his opponents. What are they doing to secure records, support survivors and ensure that the consequences of the attacks remain a public responsibility between anniversaries?
A city must be able to mourn across disagreement
Reconciliation is a delicate word here. Muslim New Yorkers do not owe reconciliation because they caused September 11. They did not. Nor should bereaved families be asked to forgive the perpetrators, abandon their politics or perform unity for the cameras. What the city can pursue is trust between neighbours. That starts with allowing people to participate in public life without making them representatives of crimes they had nothing to do with. It also requires room for uncomfortable disagreement. Someone can oppose Mamdani’s policies and accept his presence. Someone else can defend his attendance while demanding better answers about language that frightens Jewish residents. Neither position is contradictory.
For Australians watching this dispute, the question is familiar enough to deserve reflection: when a minority politician is criticised, are we examining a particular decision, or allowing the argument to become a verdict on an entire community?
The distinction becomes especially consequential at a memorial. People arrive carrying losses that no political argument can resolve. They should not have to settle the city’s disputes before hearing their loved ones remembered. Mamdani’s responsibility is to attend with restraint, respect the families and keep the attention on those being honoured. His critics remain free to challenge him before and after the ceremony. New York does not need to agree on its mayor to remember its dead. Keeping him away would leave every political disagreement intact, while sacrificing an opportunity to show that those disagreements need not decide who can stand together in grief.
References
2. New York Post, 9/11 victim families deliver petition to Mamdani at City Hall, 8 September 2026
9. City of New York, Executive Order 21, 4 September 2026
10. Queens College, Mohammad Salman Hamdani documentary and memorial announcement, 2023
11. Human Rights Watch, We Are Not the Enemy, 14 November 2002
