Mayor Zohran Mamdani praises very fine people who didn’t shout ‘Allahu Akbar’ while trying to murder people in the name of ISIS
Less than 24 hours after Zohran Mamdani defended his wife for expressing solidarity with Hamas, two maniacs tried to detonate homemade bombs outside the mayor’s residence in what police are calling an act of “ISIS-inspired terrorism.” The bombs did not go off, but were deemed to be “highly volatile” and intended to inflict maximum carnage.
The intended target: an anti-Islam protest organized by the Nazi-adjacent provocateur Jake Lang. A group of counter-protesters had also gathered to celebrate diversity and inclusion. Left-wing influencer Walter Masterson was holding a bullhorn and touting New York’s embrace of immigrants when one of the terrorists ran up behind him, yelling “Allahu Akbar” before hurling one of the bombs toward Lang and his comrades. The same terrorist, identified as Emir Balat, was filmed chanting “Allahu Akbar” after police detained him. He told authorities he wanted the attack to be “even bigger” than the Boston Marathon bombing in 2013.
Doing what comes naturally, Mamdani immediately denounced the anti-Islam protesters for provoking the terrorists. “Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism,” Mamdani said over the weekend in his first public statement after the attack. “Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are.” He eventually got around to condemning the actual bomb throwers who tried to murder people. This was “never acceptable,” Mamdani said, and “the antithesis of who we are.”
The mayor’s address to the media on Monday also began with a lengthy condemnation of anti-Muslim bigotry. “Let me also be clear about something else,” Mamdani said eventually. “New York City will never tolerate violence, whether from protests or counter-protests.” He then praised the very fine people who showed up to the counter-protest, noting that the vast majority of them were not carrying bombs or trying to inflict carnage in the name of an Islamic terrorist group.
Mamdani’s political allies in New York were just as eager to blame the attempted terrorist attack on Islamophobia. Murad Awawdeh, president of the New York Immigration Coalition, blasted Lang and his fellow protesters for inciting terrorism against themselves with their “outlandish” bigotry. “We’re talking about a white supremacist who’s looking for people to respond to them in this way,” he said.
Brad Lander, the former New York City comptroller who is running against Rep. Dan Goldman (D., N.Y.) in the Democratic primary, said he was “horrified” by the “disturbing threat of violence” outside the mayor’s residence, which he instinctively blamed on the anti-Muslim protesters. “Vile displays of Islamophobia will never be tolerated in our city,” he said. Lander apologized after learning some basic facts about the case. “I’m sorry for jumping to conclusions and posting too soon,” he wrote. “But I’m not sorry for hating Islamophobia as much as I hate antisemitism.”
Manhattan borough president Brad Hoylman-Sigal’s (D.) initial response to the attack was a vague condemnation of both sides. “Today on Manhattan’s Upper East Side we saw disturbing acts and displays of hate targeting Muslim and Jewish New Yorkers,” he wrote. “Every New Yorker should be alarmed when any community is targeted in this way. We must do everything we can to ensure New York remains a place where people of every faith and background feel safe.”
New York state Sen. Liz Krueger (D.) said the city was “no place for anti-Muslim hate or any other kind of prejudice,” and blasted “out-of-state provocateurs sowing fear, division, and violence.” It was unclear if she was referring to the protesters or the terrorists who tried to kill them. In a social media post made long after the facts had been established, former MSNBC legal analyst Joyce Vance blasted Republicans for failing to condemn “political violence.”
In fairness to the Democrats who rushed to judgment, mainstream reporting on the incident has been characteristically sympathetic to the view that anyone protesting against Islam was asking to be bombed. “A far-right influencer attracted the counterprotest that turned violent,” read a New York Times “live update” headline posted on Monday. The paper’s reporting was riddled with passive-voiced descriptions of how “smoking jars of metal and fuses” were thrown by an individual who was “one of six people arrested after a clash with anti-Muslim protesters.”
The Times portrayed the chaotic scene as a “strained moment filled with tensions both national and hyperlocal,” and noted Lang’s recent attendance at what organizers billed as a “vigil and community iftar for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and all martyrs of Amerikan imperialism [sic].” The paper interviewed several residents who witnessed the clashes, including a 29-year-old media professional who conceded that “antifascist protesting is probably more important than my gym routine.”
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