Credit Image: © Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire via ZUMA Press
If Zohran Mamdani wins the New York mayoral election as expected, two of the world’s most iconic cities will have Muslim mayors. Sadiq — now Sir Sadiq — Khan has been mayor of London for eight years, and is serving his third term. With whites now a minority, Mr. Khan has locked down the Muslim vote, which grows weekly because, as he explains, “London needs more immigrants.”
Mr. Khan has also forged a largely exploitative alliance with the black “community,” thereby ensuring its electoral support, or at least that of blacks who bother to vote. Mr. Khan’s record gives us a glimpse of what might happen in New York City under a Muslim mayor running on an avowedly socialist ticket and determined to govern a sanctuary city.
Immigration into London and New York is different. The mass of British immigrants are Muslim, and not many Hispanics make it to Britain. But Muslims are gaining a powerbase in the US, which began in Dearborn, Michigan, and a Muslim mayor in America’s largest and most famous city would be a prize for all Muslims.
If Mr. Khan is an example, Mr. Mamdani may prove to be an excellent mayor — if you are Muslim. Mr. Khan has called himself a devout and practicing Muslim many times, and the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr now takes precedence over Christmas.
Mr. Khan is generally a skillful media operator who can deflect criticism while still conveying his central message. Take housing, a key issue for mayors on both sides of the Atlantic. Mr. Mamdani wants to triple the amount of union-built, state-funded housing.
What about Mr. Khan? He has set a target of 50,000 new homes, and makes no secret of whom they should be for:
The other big issue facing Londoners . . . . We need to build far more homes in our city because often people from minority communities want to live near a mosque, near halal food, near where there are other people like them.” [emphasis added]
Mr. Khan is well aware that almost half of London social housing is occupied by foreign-born people, mostly Muslims. New-builds will almost certainly go to Mr. Khan’s co-religionists first. Mr. Mamdani will need to be watched for similar favoritism.
Whatever working relationship the two mayors establish, cynics will see two Mohammedans working together for Islam. However, Mr. Mamdani is a Shia while Mr. Khan was raised Sunni. Shia and Sunni are the biggest schism in the religion’s history. It would usually be unthinkable for the members of one of these tribes to do business with the other, but perhaps globalism will trump religion.
Mr. Khan had humble beginnings. Born in south London and the son of a bus driver, he escaped his background and became a lawyer — like so many in British politics. Naturally, he was a “human rights” specialist and defended Muslims in some high-profile cases.
Mr. Mamdani was born in Uganda, and was what Barack Obama was: a “community organizer.” This, unlike being a lawyer, is not an actual job, but these aggravated hobbyists are acceptable in American politics in a way the British political class still resists.
Mr. Khan is famously disliked by President Trump, and does not like to be mocked or criticized. The two have traded insults. But Mr. Khan looked silly when reporters asked him about Mr. Trump’s remarks: He reached for tired old accusations of racism and Islamophobia.
Mr. Trump is candid about Mr. Mamdani: “We don’t need a communist in this country, but if we have one, I’m going to be watching over him very carefully on behalf of the nation.” Mr. Trump has also threatened to arrest Mr. Mamdani if he steps out of line, as he already has in his avowal to “fight ICE.” If Mr. Mamdani can avoid hysterical responses to Mr. Trump’s comments, he may win the respect of Democrats looking to fill the VP slot for 2028.
New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani poses at a canvass organized by the Muslim Democratic Club of New York. (Credit Image: © Ron Adar/SOPA Images via ZUMA Press Wire)
Mr. Khan is an uncomfortable media figure and, while fluent in Urdu, restricts his speeches in that language to private Muslim gatherings. Mr. Mamdani is a step ahead, with campaign videos in Hindi and Urdu, in both of which he is fluent. Academic Soniya Munshi told Al-Jazeera: “Ultimately, what made those South Asian language videos so powerful was the culturally relevant references combined with the direct message of his vision and platform.” The medium is more important than the message.
Mr. Mamdani will have studied Mr. Khan’s mayoral career, looking for areas where he can improve the optics. He will not have failed to notice Mr. Khan’s arrogance, and Mr. Mamdani has worked on a humble version of tough-minded humanism.
Mr. Khan was recently asked whether there were any so-called “grooming gangs” in London. Mr. Khan pretended not to understand the term, and dismissed the questioner with contempt. Mr. Mamdani won’t be doing any of that, knowing his winning smile is preferable to the Khan scowl.
Why haven’t white Londoners fought back at the ballot box? Mr. Khan has the ever-increasing Muslim vote sewn up. Muslims may not work much, but they vote, and they understand democracy better than low-turnout whites. On election day, Muslim women get to leave the house for a rare day when they don’t even have to buy groceries. Their local imam will have told them, in Urdu, in which box to put the X.
Mayor of London Sadiq Khan visits the Mughal-era Badshahi Mosque in Lahore, Pakistan. (Credit Image: © Stefan Rousseau/PA Wire via ZUMA Press)
Also, the “white community” in London is liberal. It’s not in the Yorkshire Dales or Cornwall that you find many pro-trans, pro-Palestine, pro-DEI, Antifa sympathizers. Like immigrants who want a job in food delivery, white liberals flock to London, and they approve of Khan because he is not white. It’s part of the London lifestyle.
Sadiq Khan is not the UK’s only Muslim mayor, nor would Mr. Mamdani be unique in America. Muslims are growing in numbers and power everywhere. Britain’s Labour government has made a serious mistake if it thinks it’s importing an electoral client bloc. Muslims will vote Labour until there is a promising Muslim politician, and then they will vote for him (always for him).
Islam is far more established in the UK media, and the Muslim lobby is powerful. America has Mehdi Hasan, an intellectually lightweight Islamist cheerleader who tells Americans that Muslims built the country, but not many other Muslim agitators in the media. Britain has several of these Muslim talking heads, working for the ummah, and they can be relied on to support their Muslim mayor. Any doubts would be un-Islamic.
The British media are predictably interested in a brown-skinned mayor in The Big Apple, and Mamdani’s BBC profile was a puff-piece. It was light on Mamdani’s lack of experience, and lauded his career “detours into film, rap, and writing.”
Mayors of both cities control their police forces, although the relationship of the two men to law enforcement is different. Mr. Mamdani has called the police “wicked” and “racist” on social media, and promoted defunding (though he is now backtracking). A CNN piece designed to boost his standing among officers fell flat. Of the gaggle of cops the candidate met on his televised charm offensive — in a Pakistani restaurant, of all places — only one endorsed him. And that officer is Shamsul Haque, the NYPD’s first Muslim to make the rank of lieutenant commander.
Mr. Khan operates very differently with the police. Officers are mostly products of the Royal College of Policing, ostensibly what it says it is, but in reality, a Marxist finishing-school. The police are woke-orthodox; dissidents can lose jobs. White police officers are leaving the force by the score, but those who remain are absolutely on-message. Plenty of London officers wear makeup and dance in pride marches, but are unlikely to show up if your house is burgled. Any officer who steps out of line in a media post is finished.
As to what New York might become under Mr. Mamdani, New York Post journalist Patricia Posner, originally from London, returned to her home city after 20 years and writes that “I felt more as though I was in Dubai rather than London.” The British perception of New York is that it has always been both cosmopolitan and racially segregated. Segregation is relatively new in London, and adds to its instability. There has been a Polish neighborhood around Acton and Ealing in west London since the Second World War, but you don’t see stickers on lampposts warning non-Poles to keep out. You have to go to Muslim Tower Hamlets or Newham to see that kind of territory-marking. There are many no-go zones for non-Muslims in Birmingham — Britain’s second city — which is the British model of a micro-caliphate. In Mr. Mamdani’s New York, look for more planning applications for mosques, with all the noise pollution of the call to prayer — now common in London.
Deportations are not a part of Britain’s political landscape, so there is no ICE to fight. Instead, Sadiq Khan has made it known that it is the white British – and particularly English –who are the enemy of his city. When promotional tourist literature was being considered by PR staff at Mr. Khan’s County Hall, it was decided that a photograph showing a white, nuclear family was “not representative” of Londoners. Technically, they are right. Khan also has a nonchalant attitude towards terrorism—which is almost always Islamist — and famously called it “part and parcel of living in a great city.” Any major terrorist incident on Mamdani’s watch would be a test of his response and of how defensive he is of Islam.
Overall, if New York’s Muslim mayorship follows that of London, things will get worse for whites, many of whom are already leaving for the outer Boroughs. If Zohran Mamdani really is a Muslim communist, then escape from New York may be the only answer.
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