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Hi readers — today marks 25 years since 9/11. In New York City, Washington, and Pennsylvania, survivors, families, and politicians are gathering to grieve and commemorate the attacks.
Today, we wanted to focus on one small part of the story in New York City, where former Mayor Rudy Giuliani singled out Mayor Zohran Mamdani, who is Muslim, with an Islamophobic screed about Mamdani’s participation in memorial ceremonies.
Giuliani’s rant, to be clear, is not really news in its own right; 25 years on, he’s less “America’s mayor” than he is the twice-disbarred, disgraced former lawyer of President Donald Trump. (And Mamdani did attend the event, even shaking hands with Giuliani.)
But Giuliani’s remarks are, unfortunately, emblematic of a disturbing trend in Republican politics, where open, aggressive Islamophobia is on the rise — 25 years after a particularly ugly brand of it emerged in response to 9/11. One major difference between then and now? In 2001, many politicians tried to tamp it down rather than inflame it.
As Nathan Lean, an assistant teaching professor at North Carolina State University and author of the book The Islamophobia Industry, explained to my colleague Christian Paz last month: “Islamophobia has passed the dinner table test. You can say things about Muslims with basic impunity today. And it’s institutionalized in the way that prejudice that targets other marginalized communities is not.”
The GOP is running on Islamophobia in 2026
The 2026 midterm elections have provided a particularly clear showcase for the right’s Islamophobic turn.
On Thursday, at the second and final night of the GOP’s unusual midterm convention in Dallas, Texas, Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) told attendees that “communism” and “Islamism” were allying against Republicans. “They share the same enemies,” he said. “They hate Christians. They hate Jews. They hate capitalism. They hate the Constitution, and they hate America.”
At another point in Cruz’s speech, attendees screamed “he should be shot” as Cruz name-checked Mamdani, Michigan Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed (who is Muslim, and who Cruz said “says he has an obligation to Sharia Law”), and Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.
As Christian reports, Michigan and especially Texas have both been on the front lines of rising Islamophobia.
Michigan has a large Muslim population in cities like Dearborn and Hamtramck, and El-Sayed has drawn particular vitriol; Rep. Nancy Mace (R-SC) wrote last month that “Every single Muslim holding public office in America is a Trojan horse, and a threat to both national security and our republic.”
And in Texas, as the New York Times reported at length last month, Islamophobia has become a matter of policy as well as rhetoric from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott and other politicians in the state.
El-Sayed, in Michigan, has described the attacks as an attempt to distract voters from other issues. “They’re going to point at me, they’re going to point at my name, like, ‘Wow, he’s different,’” he said last month. “My name is not raising your gas prices. My name is not taking us to war. My name is not the reason you can’t afford your groceries.”
Without much else to run on, though, Republicans seem to have decided they’re all-in on Islamophobia.
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