Rudy Giuliani went on Newsmax over the weekend and said the quiet part loud enough for the whole country to hear. The former mayor, who held the city together in the days after September 11, told a right-wing cable host that the current mayor of New York, Zohran Mamdani, should skip the 9/11 memorial ceremony at Ground Zero. “Well, there’s no question he should,” Giuliani said. The reason? Mamdani is Muslim, and Giuliani’s feelings are hurt.
“Having lost friends there and being very close to many of the families, it offends me that he’s coming,” Giuliani said, as though grief were a private patent he alone holds on a day that killed nearly 3,000 people and shattered a nation.
Then came the part that should disqualify anyone from a microphone. Giuliani drew a line between Mamdani’s faith and the 9/11 hijackers, claiming Osama bin Laden was at least “open” about his hatred while Mamdani “is trying to hide it.” He floated a conspiracy about a global Islamic plot to “dominate” the western world. He said “too many Americans fall for that Islamic propaganda.” This was not a dog whistle. It was a foghorn.
Let us be precise about what is happening here. A man who was once called “America’s mayor” is using the deaths of nearly 3,000 people as a cudgel to tell a duly elected Muslim mayor that he does not belong at a public ceremony on public ground in the city he was elected to lead. This is not about the families. This is about who Giuliani thinks gets to call themselves a New Yorker, an American, a mourner. The answer, in his telling, does not include Muslims.
Mamdani has spoken before about how the Islamophobic backlash after 2001 made anti-Muslim prejudice “a fact of life” for Muslim Americans, about how that day marked so many New Yorkers as “other.” He was right then, and the last 72 hours have proven him right again. An online petition with nearly 100,000 signatures demands he stay home. Former governor George Pataki piled on, citing Mamdani’s associations with controversial figures as a pretext. The machinery of exclusion is not subtle.
DHSgov (Public domain) via Wikimedia CommonsMamdani’s response is the only one that matters. Standing at a Brooklyn breakfast for J’ouvert and the West Indian Day Parade, he confirmed he will attend the main ceremony and multiple 9/11 events on Friday, standing with families and first responders, as he did last year before taking office. “I’m proud to be the mayor of this city. I love this city. I love this country,” he said. He asked that the week focus on the families whose loved ones were stolen 25 years ago and on the first responders who gave everything.
Governor Kathy Hochul backed him without hedging. “He absolutely should be there,” she said Monday. “It would be more insulting to the vast majority if he did not come.” She called the ceremony a communal event and warned against letting Republicans turn it into a wedge.
She is right. Giuliani and Pataki and the petition signers are not protecting the families. They are performing a ritual of gatekeeping that treats Muslim presence at a memorial as an insult to the dead. The dead included Muslim Americans. The first responders included Muslim Americans. The city that mourns includes Muslim Americans.
Mamdani issued an executive order last week designating 9/11 an annual Day of Remembrance and Service, requiring a citywide moment of silence and standing up a new emergency preparedness taskforce. That is what leadership looks like at a memorial: action, not exclusion.
Giuliani had a choice between honoring the dead and weaponizing them. He chose the weapon. Mamdani chose the ceremony. Show up, stand with the families, and refuse to be othered. That is the work.