Prostitution has taken center stage in the New York mayor’s race, as front-runner Zohran Mamdani is pushing to decriminalize it in the city.
This has prompted one of his opponents, incumbent Mayor Eric Adams, this week to question the religious principles of Mamdani, a Muslim.
Mamdani, the Democrat nominee for mayor and a self-professed socialist, championed legalizing “sex work” in the New York state Assembly when he was representing Queens. He now says he wants to emulate proposals by former Democrat Mayor Bill de Blasio.
“What I want to do is look at the ways in which the previous administration addressed this issue,” said Mamdani, according to the New York Post. He added, “I found that it created far more safety than what the current administration has done.”
In the final year of his administration, de Blasio proposed decriminalizing prostitution to shift focus on arresting traffickers.
Adams argued prostitution leads to more sex trafficking.
“I’m a man of God, just as Mamdani says he’s a Muslim. I don’t know where in his Quran it states that it’s OK for a woman to be on the streets selling their body,” Adams told reporters. “I don’t know what Quran he is reading. It’s not in my Bible. As a man who said he is of faith, I don’t quite understand what religion supports prostitution.”
Adams added, “You’re not doing any service to a woman who is on the street who is forced to sell her body for whatever reason.”