Far-right groups pressure Mamdani to stay away from 9/11 memorial

• New York's Muslim mayor is set to attend Friday's memorial anyway, as prominent Republicans and a growing petition campaign call for him to stay away.

A group of prominent right-wing figures, led by former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani, has spent the past week urging Mayor Zohran Mamdani to skip Friday’s 9/11 memorial ceremony. Their criticism has increasingly focused on Mamdani’s Muslim faith.

In a weekend interview with the right-leaning network Newsmax, Giuliani, who led New York City during the 2001 attacks, said it offended him that Mamdani planned to attend, citing friends he lost that day and his closeness to victims' families. 

Asked directly whether Mamdani should skip the event, Giuliani said there was "no question" that he should.

The interview went further than a simple objection to Mamdani's attendance. Giuliani drew a comparison between Mamdani's religion and the 9/11 hijackers, who had acted on the orders of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, saying the hijackers had carried out the attacks openly "in the name of the Muslim religion" and, in his telling, "weren't hiding it like Mamdani is trying to hide it." 

He also asserted that Mamdani holds the view that Islam should be the dominant religion, a claim Mamdani has not made.

Giuliani's comments are the most pointed example of a wider conservative effort to keep Mamdani away from the ceremony. 

Former New York governor George Pataki has voiced similar opposition, and an online petition making the same argument has gathered close to 100,000 signatures. 

Mamdani's response

Mamdani addressed the controversy Monday at a breakfast tied to Brooklyn's J'ouvert and West Indian Day Parade celebrations, confirming he would attend Friday's main ceremony along with other 9/11 commemorative events, as he did the previous year before taking office. 

He framed his presence around honoring the families who lost loved ones 25 years ago and the first responders who answered the call that day, saying he was proud to serve as mayor and loves both the city and the country. 

He and his office have otherwise declined to respond directly to Giuliani's remarks.

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The 9/11 attacks

The 2001 attacks were carried out by 19 hijackers linked to al-Qaida, who seized four commercial airliners on the morning of Sep. 11. 

Two struck the twin towers of the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan, causing both to collapse; a third hit the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.; and a fourth crashed into a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers attempted to retake the plane. 

Nearly 3,000 people were killed. 

The World Trade Center site now houses a memorial with twin reflecting pools set into the towers' footprints and a museum; each year survivors and relatives read the names of the victims at a ceremony attended by current and former political leaders.