Ground Zero, the site of the 9/11 attacks, is among the most hallowed ground in American history. It is where 2,763 people lost their lives when al-Qaeda terrorists, followers of an extremist branch of political Islam, flew two hijacked passenger jets into the World Trade Center, collapsing the Twin Towers on top of Manhattan’s financial district. Because of the attackers’ religious affiliation and motivation, Muslims — up to and including the mayor of New York City — have been told to steer clear.
It would be “Islamist triumphalism,” former Speaker Newt Gingrich said. A “slap in the face,” said conservative yapper Glenn Beck. An “unnecessary provocation” that “stabs you in the heart,” according to former Alaska governor and vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
No, those comments are not about the recent flare-up over New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, attending the 25th anniversary ceremony of the attacks on Friday. They are from a similar controversy that happened 15 years ago when a group of New York Muslims planned to build the Park51 Islamic community center — dubbed by opponents as the Ground Zero Mosque — a couple of blocks away from the former site of the Trade Center. But they sound exactly the same.
“It offends me that he’s coming,” former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani said on Newsmax on Sept. 6 about Mamdani’s planned appearance at the ceremony.
What is it that offends Giuliani? “They have every desire to take us over,” Giuliani said about Muslims. “That’s what they’re taught from the day they begin their extremist religious education. Mamdani is a clear supporter of that.”
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attends an unveiling ceremony for a new 9/11 Memorial Wall at One Police Plaza in New York, on Sept. 9, 2026.
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani attends an unveiling ceremony for a new 9/11 Memorial Wall at One Police Plaza in New York, on Sept. 9, 2026.
KENA BETANCUR via Getty Images
The former mayor went on to explicitly compare Mamdani to the 9/11 hijackers, stating that they “weren’t hiding it like Mamdani is trying to hide it.”
Mamdani is “someone who seems, you know, if it was 25 years ago, he’d be probably supporting the attackers on the World Trade Centers,” said Fox News host Cheryl Casone. Mamdani was 9 years old at the time of the attacks.
“Mamdani is a jihadist,” Laura Loomer, a confidante of President Donald Trump, wrote on social media as she urged Vice President JD Vance not to shake the “dirty Muslim Mayor’s” hand at the ceremony.
“By G-d, is he going to wear a suicide vest to the 9/11 ceremony?” wrote the anti-Muslim activist Pamela Geller.
“It’s a message to Osama bin Laden that, look, ‘We conquered New York,’” New York City Councilmember Vickie Paladino, a Republican representing Queens, said about Mamdani appearing at the ceremony.
All of this follows a petition from a group of 9/11 family members urging Mamdani to not appear at the ceremony. The petition, which garnered more than 100,000 online signatures and relentless hype from the conservative New York Post, claims that Mamdani should not attend because he hired Ramzi Kassem, a former defense counsel for an al-Qaeda member imprisoned at Guantanamo, as chief counsel; appeared on Twitch streamer Hasan Piker’s show; and refused to denounce the phrase “globalize the intifada.”
For his part, Mamdani denounced Piker’s statement that America “deserved 9/11” and Piker has himself apologized for the comment. Like many U.S. lawyers, Kassem represented Guantanamo detainees who suffered torture at the hands of the U.S. military. His main client, Abu al-Dharbi, the brother-in-law of one of the 9/11 hijackers, ultimately pleaded guilty to his role in an attack on a French tanker in Yemen and agreed to testify against a higher-level target. And Mamdani has said that the phrase “globalize the intifada” is “not language that I use.”
These claims may not explicitly link the mayor’s religion to their calls for him to avoid the ceremony, but the implication is pretty evident. That this call to disinvite Mamdani from the ceremony rhymes with the Ground Zero Mosque controversy makes it even more clear.
Ann Podina from Long Island attends a rally in opposition to the controversial proposed mosque located near Ground Zero during the 9/11 anniversary remembrance ceremony in New York, New York, on Sept. 11, 2010.
Ann Podina from Long Island attends a rally in opposition to the controversial proposed mosque located near Ground Zero during the 9/11 anniversary remembrance ceremony in New York, New York, on Sept. 11, 2010.
Carol Guzy/The Washington Post via Getty Images
Back in 2010, opponents of the Park51 mosque, many of them the same as those urging Mamdani to avoid the 9/11 ceremony, claimed that building a mosque near Ground Zero would be inappropriate — even though a mosque already sat just two blocks further away than the proposed one. The link between the entire religion and the attacks was explicit.
In the end, the Park51 community center was never built. Nationally, opposition was widespread across Republicans, Democrats and independents, even though a plurality of Manhattanites supported it. A big reason why is because Republicans turned it — and 9/11 itself — into a political issue for the 2010 midterm elections.
“Every candidate who’s in the challenge districts are going to be asked, how do you feel about building the mosque on the Ground Zero sites?” Ed Rollins, then a top GOP political strategist, told CBS News at the time.
The times are different now — in both good and bad ways. Mamdani is extremely popular in New York City. His approval rating stood at 57% in a September poll conducted by Suffolk University. That same poll found 74% support him attending the 9/11 ceremony and 60% stating that he represents the core values of the city.
As a political attack issue, then, the nonstop Republican pounding of the ceremony disinvitation campaign as seen on Fox News and the Post is a flop.
However, public views of Islam have gotten more negative and partisan since 9/11. In the immediate aftermath of the attack in March 2002, just 25% said that Islam is more likely to encourage violence than other religions, according to Pew. By January 2026, that number stood at 51% with highly divergent partisan views. Twenty-nine percent of Democrats say that Islam is more violence-prone than other religions, while a whopping 76% of Republicans agree with that statement.
Anti-Muslim attacks are a key prong of the GOP midterm campaign this fall, as the party looks to juice base turnout amid an electorate angry at the ever-higher prices they pay fueled by Trump’s endless war of choice in Iran. In Texas, attacks on Islam dominated the primary campaigns for key statewide offices. Abdul El-Sayed, a Muslim and the Democratic candidate in the Michigan Senate race, has faced a nonstop barrage from Republicans attempting to cast him as an extremist and not really an American, in the same vein as attacks on Mamdani.
Whether Republican efforts to use the cudgel of 9/11 in the midterm elections win out over the public’s much larger concerns about the rising cost of living will be determined on Nov. 3. But one thing is clear: 9/11 didn’t bring the country together. Twenty-five years on, it’s become just another political symbol to further tear us apart.