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At his first annual interfaith breakfast Friday, Mayor Zohran Mamdani framed New York City’s sanctuary status as part of a religious calling to welcome “the stranger,” invoking the Bible, the Quran and the Bhagavad Gita to defend the city’s immigration policy.
In his address to nearly 400 faith and community leaders at the New York Public Library, Mamdani accused federal immigration officials of reigning “terror upon our neighbors” and inflicting “cruelty that staggers the conscience.”
“They arrive as if atop a pale horse, and they leave a path of wreckage in their wake,” he said. “People ripped from their cars. Guns drawn against the unarmed. Families torn apart. Lives shattered — quietly, swiftly, brutally. If these are not attacks upon the stranger among us, what is?”
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Mamdani mentioned his own interfaith upbringing being raised by a Muslim father and Hindu mother to highlight the religious diversity in New York City and argue various faiths, from Christianity to Islam, instruct believers to defend “the stranger.”
He quoted passages from the Torah and book of Deuteronomy about “loving the stranger” and the Hindu text the Bhagavad Gita to urge New Yorkers to respond to the “sorrows of others” as if they were “our own.”
“I think of Exodus 23:9, the words of the Torah: ‘Thou shalt not oppress a stranger: for ye know the heart of a stranger, seeing ye were strangers in the land of Egypt,’” Mamdani said before praising Jewish New Yorkers for standing “alongside the persecuted.”
He also cited Buddhism’s teaching about removing desire, hatred and ignorance to achieve freedom from suffering.
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Moving to his own faith, Mamdani described Islam as a religion “built upon a narrative of migration,” noting that the Prophet Muhammad was “a stranger, too,” who fled persecution to find a home in Medina.
“Surah An-Nahl 16:42 tells us: ‘As for those who emigrated in the cause of Allah after being persecuted, we will surely bless them with a good home in this world,'” he quoted. “Or, as the Prophet Muhammad (SWT) said: ‘Islam began as something strange and will go back to being strange, so glad tidings to the strangers.’
“If faith offers us the moral compass to stand alongside the stranger,” Mamdani said, “government can provide the resources.”
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At the event, the mayor also signed Executive Order 13, which reaffirms and strengthens New York City’s commitment to its sanctuary laws and bars federal agents from city property without a judicial warrant.
He also announced a new “Know Your Rights” campaign that will distribute 32,000 flyers and booklets in 10 languages to faith leaders in the city to share with immigrants in their congregations.
Mamdani also honored activists Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed in confrontations with ICE and Border Patrol in Minneapolis last month, calling them examples of those who “cared for the stranger” through ultimate sacrifice.
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