Muslim New Yorkers expand political clout after Mamdani’s win
Zohran Mamdani’s victory has given Muslim organizers and faith leaders the impetus to insert themselves into more formal political alliances
By Abdullahi Yusuf
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s victory has given Muslim organizers and faith leaders the impetus to insert themselves into more formal political alliances and networks.
As a wave of Islamophobic attacks spread late in the mayoral race, Mamdani was quick to respond, traveling to a mosque in the Bronx to denounce offensive remarks while surrounding himself with Muslim faith and community leaders.
It was a telling show of support among an emergent voting bloc that had been quietly coalescing within their communities for years, but whose political power was only beginning to emerge.
Now, with Mamdani at the helm of City Hall, Muslim New Yorkers are moving to expand their foothold in the city’s organizing networks. On Thursday, a group consisting mostly of Muslim organizers and faith leaders in the Bronx voted to join the Metro Industrial Areas Foundation, one of the nation’s oldest nonpartisan organizing networks.
The foundation’s New York cohort has been at the forefront of a decades-long interfaith push for affordable housing and public safety, including heads of the city’s most influential Black churches, community centers and synagogues.
The foundation will now incorporate a broader coalition under the moniker Bronx First, which includes dozens of churches and community centers as well as more than 40 mosques.
By the end of Thursday evening, the self-funded coalition raised nearly $160,000 for their efforts.
Roughly 2,000 people across faiths, generations and socioeconomic backgrounds filled an auditorium at Fordham University to formalize the addition.
“We all face the same challenges as everybody else in the community,” said Haji Dukuray, a board member with the Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx who helped organize the event. “It’s great we have a Muslim mayor, but that’s just an example of when we come together as a group, how well we can do.”
A handful of speakers were critical of Mamdani, whose absence some perceived as a slight against the group that helped power his win. Dukuray highlighted the mayor’s failure to attend in his opening remarks.
“We invited him, and he decided to ignore us. That’s a huge mistake on his part,” he said. “But we don’t need him here to organize ourselves.”
The group affirmed its top demands of city leadership, touching on public safety, affordable housing and mental health resources. Newer Muslim members have underscored the need for more public safety measures, pointing to gang violence that has harmed their communities.
Increased detainments and deportations have added urgency, as many members are immigrants from West Africa and the Middle East.
Mamdani, a Muslim South Asian born in Uganda, brought his message of affordability to the city’s mosques during his campaign. His candidacy galvanized a record number of Muslim voters, who turned out in droves.
Muslim New Yorkers more than tripled their turnout in the last mayoral election, growing from nearly 22,000 voters in the 2021 race to just over 66,000 in 2025, according to polling firm L2.
Many Muslim leaders had been reluctant to become politically engaged, seeing politics as a corrupt system. But in recent years, more have come to believe that not becoming involved would only hurt Muslim communities, especially amid housing shortages.
The shortage contributed to tragedies like the 2022 fire that killed 17 people, many of them Muslims from West Africa.
“This mentality of ‘listen, we’re here to do well for ourselves and our communities and to show our neighbors that we’re good people’ has kind of shifted over to ‘we’re being treated like crap and need to empower ourselves,’” said Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“This is not the Muslim community trying to gain power for power’s sake.”
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