What Zohran Mamdani Means For Arab Americans

posted on: Jul 2, 2025

Left: Mamdani Canvassers in Harlem, SWinxy via Wikicommons – CC BY 4.0 | Right: Mamdani, Dmitry Shein via Wikicommons – CC BY 4.0

By: Katie Beason / Arab America Contributing Writer

Zohran Mamdani is not Arab, despite what his attack ads might insinuate. However, that diminish that his election isn’t deeply important for Arab Americans living in New York City. Arabs and Muslims turned out in droves to support him in his thrilling victory last Tuesday for a multitude of reasons, including the threat against brown students at universities, his economic policies, and his support for Palestine. This support extends not only to shared political concerns but also to real fears experienced by Arab students across the city.

Arab Students in NYC Universities

There are, of course, considerable fears from Arab students studying in New York City. Those who have been vocal about the rights of Palestinians and anti-Arab racism risk social exile, doxxing, and disciplinary action. Meanwhile, international students like Mahmoud Khalil face arrest and deportation. One student, Ahmed, described the paranoia that he and fellow Palestinian students feel, watching students of Middle Eastern heritage or nationality being disappeared from academic spaces.

Mamdani has spoken publicly in support of Khalil. And before the primaries, his parents attended the welcome home rally for Khalil. His Oscar-award winning mother donning a yellow and purple bandana as a scarf around her neck. Mamdani is himself the son of a Columbia professor, Mahmoud Mamdani, who teaches in the highly politicized Middle East, South Asia, and Africa Studies department.

Mamdani’s Economic Policies Favorable to People of Color

A number of Arab New Yorkers express a connection with his more socialist policies, including his pledge to raise taxes on the ultra-wealthy. Christopher Maag reported for the New York Times that many Arabs, who otherwise have felt disinterested in a political apparatus which seldom represents them, feel empowered by and invested in his platform. “Everybody’s happy,” said Dr. Habib Joudeh to Maag. “It’s not because he’s a Muslim. It’s because there is a change.”

Not all New Yorkers are ready to embrace his economic policies, however. The New York Post and others have been reporting that Mamdani’s economic policy targets white neighborhoods arbitrarily and unfairly. This is a motivated presentation of Mamdani’s plan to shift the tax burden from “overtaxed homeowners in the outer boroughs” to wealthier neighborhoods and owners of more expensive homes in order to address the issue that “homeowners in expensive neighborhoods pay less than their fair share,” a claim which is supported by evidence.

Helping to Fight Islamophobia

The prevalence of Islamophobia in New York City has increased considerably since Israel’s siege on Gaza, and in this respect, the prospect that Mamdani may become the city’s first Muslim mayor is an incredible feat. Many Arab Muslims have felt connected to Mamdani’s struggles with Islamophobia, particularly in coordinated social media harassment campaigns against him and in the Cuomo campaigns attack ads.

One particularly vile example, in which the Cuomo SuperPAC edited his beard to make him look “like a terrorist,” according to one NYTimes interviewee, went viral on Twitter earlier this month.

The Root Cause

However, Ahmed expressed that it’s equally important to focus on the racialized element of Islamophobia. He believes that the vitriol against Mamdani is because of his support for Palestinians, and the racism which that belief begets in American political discourse.

“Framing [Palestine] as a religious issue,” says Ahmed, “makes it A) seem like it’s an eternal thing that’s gone back to the Crusades and the Bible, which is a lie, that’s a myth… And B) frames it as something absolute that’s based on this very intangible thing that’s your spiritual beliefs and religions as if everyone in a religion magically behaves the exact same way.” 

Apartheid states and settler projects are historically built on foundations of racism, predicated on the belief that people of a certain race are inferior and therefore undeserving of autonomy. However, in the 21st century, the idea that race is a biological reality, and that there are fundamental differences between races, is being constantly dismantled by science and critical race theory.

For colonization and apartheid to continue then, there has to be some other kind of supranational, irreconcilable difference between Palestinians and Israelis other than race, lest ethno-states like Israel lose support on the grounds of perpetuating racism. Within this framework, the foundations of racism are dressed with a new veneer of Islamophobia, and the belief that Muslims are inherently violent because of their religious beliefs.

This is also why the attack campaigns against Mamdani made no distinction between his Indian ethnicity and religion, and stereotypes of Arab Muslims or Africans. As many attack ads edit him into Ghanan kaftans. His religion doesn’t really matter to the people darkening and lengthening his beard, but his race does.

Mamdani, “Dignity,” and Hope for the Future

The overwhelming feeling from many Arabs in NYC is how encouraging Mamdani’s landslide victory in the primaries feels, as a representation of support for Arabs and Palestinians in the city. One Arab university student, Nicholas, said the results showed him that “there’s a lot of people who are not Arab and must be fed up on some level with the way Arabs are treated all throughout the media and all throughout the political realm.” In this respect, Mamdani’s overwhelming victory indicates that, despite the wealth invested in prolific anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab rhetoric on social media and in advertising, there are hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers who supported Mamdani’s pro-Palestinian views.

There are also plenty of New Yorkers who assume or accuse Mamdani of being Arab, simply because of misconceptions about Arabs and Islam. However, Mamdani did little to defend himself from these “accusations” to score political points, says Nicholas. Rather than launch careful campaigns to distance himself from the Arab population in New York to appeal to other voters, he opted not to contribute to the anti-Arab racism, from which many brown New Yorkers suffer.

Ahmed described feeling like Mamdani’s was one of the only politicians who “was dignifying Arabs as human beings,” while Trump and others use “Palestinian” as a political slur.

For Ahmed, Nicholas, and the other Arab New Yorkers who watched last Tuesday’s election, the resounding support for Zohran Mamdani represented a hope. That their future in New York would be one of community, compassion, and dignity. Mamdani may not be Arab, but his refusal to separate himself from his Arab neighbors is indicative of his integrity. For many voters, that’s what was on the ballot.

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