[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
In 2023, Mohammed made its appearance on the list of the top 10 most popular names for boys in New York City. Anyone paying attention to this seemingly minor statistic could have predicted the emergence of Zohran Mamdani as the Democrat nominee in the upcoming mayoral election.
Mohammed had appeared as the sixth most common baby among ‘Asians’ in New York City in 2013. By 2017, the name of the genocidal warlord of Islam had become the most common baby name among ‘Asians’ in the city. The rapid growth showed the power of demographics.
Nearly 300 Mohammeds (under various spellings) were born in New York City in 2021 accompanied by over 150 Ahmeds, and dozens of Alis, Omars, Adnans and many others.
The Muslim population of New York City is still undetermined. While Islamist groups claim that there are over 1 million Muslims, they tend to exaggerate to build up their influence, but a Pew survey estimated Muslim settlers as making up 3% of the population of New York City.
Mamdani only won the votes of 5% of the population of New York City. That’s within 2% of the estimated Muslim population of the city. Whatever the actual size of the Muslim population of the city may be, it was more than enough to make the difference in a mayoral primary that few New Yorkers bothered to vote in because they found all the candidates repugnant even while mosques successfully turned out the bloc vote to rig an election for their candidate.
Mamdani was not a popular candidate, but he toured the city’s mosques and told the members of one Hamas-supporting mosque that this is “an opportunity — to tell the world that Muslims don’t just belong in New York City but that we belong in City Hall.”
That message, delivered in a mosque, combined tribal nationalism and Islamism.
How many mosques are there in the city? There were 285 in 2015. Some current estimates place the number at over 500 now. While Islamist groups do build mosques that they don’t need and can’t fill in order to build up influence with projects like the Ground Zero Mosque and other mosques in Manhattan (which unlike Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx, does not have a significant Muslim population below 125th Street) they reflect a growing Muslim population.
The vast majority of that growth happened after 9/11. The old Arab Muslim population which cheered on the rooftops after the September 11 attacks and was responsible for pre 9/11 terrorist attacks like the World Trade Center bombing mainly lived in New Jersey and parts of Brooklyn are a minority now with the massive influx of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and other Muslims from the vicinity of India colonizing the city.
One of the most important things to understand about Zohran Mamdani is that he isn’t just a Muslim, but he’s an Indian Muslim. His rise reflects the growing numbers of Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indian Muslims who have taken over entire neighborhoods in the city.
There are an estimated 100,000 Bangladeshis occupying parts of New York City. From around 35,000 in 2010, the colonizing population rapidly increased, taking over parts of Queens, once home to middle class Greek, Italian and Jewish populations, but now Mamdani territory.
The Queens district that Mamdani used as a springboard to seize power in New York had formerly been held by Aravella Simotas, a fairly typical representative of the next generation of old school Democrats, before being ousted by Mamdani using Muslim bloc votes.
On paper, both Simotas, a child of a Greek-American family who had lived in Africa, and Mamdani, the son of Indian Muslims also out of Africa, were both young ‘progressive’ Democrats who had all the right left-wing positions. Mamdani was backed by the Democratic Socialists of America while Simotas was backed by the Queens Democratic Party.
There was virtually no difference between their actual positions forcing Mamdani to adopt increasingly insane leftist positions that are now coming back to haunt him to stand out..
“I’ve worked with Aravella, and I’m not quite sure how you could be more left-leaning than she is,” a councilwoman said.
Simotas had lived her whole life in Queens while Mamdani, who had been living in Manhattan, wasn’t even from Queens but had moved there for the election. Why Queens? According to Mamdani, he moved to the area because he liked the Muslim population already there.
Mamdani had moved into Queens to run in a Muslim district against a fellow leftist Dem.
The 2020 Democrat primary came down to a narrow victory for Mamdani at 51.20% over 48.62% by a margin of around 400 votes. That began Mamdani’s career in politics.
Mamdani’s victory was part of a larger pattern.
Even while Mamdani used Muslim votes to seize control of District 36, ‘Mary’ Jobaida, a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant, tried to take control of Assembly District 37 also in Queens. Jobaida, like Mamdani, ran on a hard left social justice platform, but still lost. She now wants to run for Mamdani’s seat if he takes over City Hall.
In Assembly District 24, David Weprin, who is Jewish, has been the target of repeated Muslim candidates running on leftist platforms including Misbaah Mahmood, Mahfuzul Islam and Mahtab Khan: an anti-Israel Islamic activist running on the slogan “Tax the Rich”.
Mamdani’s rise reflects a larger Islamic campaign in President Trump and David Horowitz’s former neighborhood.
In 2019, I warned that Queens was becoming ‘Queensistan” after describing the rise of Islamic terrorism and colonization in the borough. “Grand Central Parkway, where Awais Chudhary, the latest Islamic terrorist operating out of Queens, planned to drop bombs on passing cars, passes a few blocks from President Trump’s childhood home. There are 5 Islamic centers within a little over a mile of where Trump had grown up.” Now Queenistan has given us Mamdani.
And that’s not the end. Mamdani is a symptom of a larger crisis. Demographics is destiny and Muslim mass migration is proving a much greater threat to New York City than hijacked airplanes.