Mamdani scrutinized for saying his aunt was a victim of anti-Muslim bigotry

New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was called out for playing the victim card during a recent Bronx speech about Islamophobia.

He told the crowd that his aunt was a victim of Islamophobia in New York after the September 11 terrorist attacks.

“I want to use this moment to speak to the Muslims in New York City. I want to speak to the memory of my aunt,” he said, appearing to wipe away a tear, “who stopped taking the subway after Sept. 11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab.”

Critics slammed the Democratic nominee and self-declared socialist.

“According to Zohran the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks,” Vice President J.D. Vance wrote on social media.

Others piled on, calling the story an outright lie after a LinkedIn account for the aunt, Masuma Mamdani, indicated that she was working in the African country of Tanzania at the time.

Records indicate she is his only Muslim aunt.

Conservative CNN commentator Ryan Girdusky speculated that Mr. Mamdani might have been referring instead to a close family friend he considered to be an aunt.

“He’s going to clear it up by saying, ’When I said my aunt, I mean a story I heard from my mom about someone she knew who was like an aunt to me,’ and [the] media is going to give him a pass out of cultural sensitivity towards third world ideas of extended families,” Mr. Girdusky wrote.

Some accused Mr. Mamdani of ignoring the real victims of the terrorist attack, which killed thousands of people at the World Trade Center in New York, at the Pentagon outside the District of Columbia and on board the United 93 flight that crashed near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.

Several social media posts juxtaposed the tearful Mr. Mamdani with images of the iconic “falling man” who was photographed plummeting to his death on 9/11.

Lisa Cusack, chair of the Republican Central Committee in California’s 44th Assembly District, comprising several Los Angeles suburbs, called out Mr. Mamdani in a viral post about the fact that Muslims in the United States were treated far better than Christians in many Muslim-majority countries.

“My father grew up Christian in a Muslim country,” she wrote. “Both sides of his family had their property confiscated, they paid a special tax for being non-Muslim, many jobs were not available to them — certainly in the government — and they lived under frequent threats of government-sanctioned mob violence. NONE of this is done to Muslims in America, and everybody knows it.”

Mr. Mamdani has made his Muslim heritage part of his campaign, which is on a likely fast track to win the Nov. 4 election.

He cited his Muslim beliefs to help deflect criticism of his appearance with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a suspect in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. Mr. Mamdani said he was being singled out for criticism because of his Muslim faith.

Mr. Mamdani faces former Gov. Andrew Cuomo, a Democrat running as an independent, and Republican Curtis Sliwa in the Nov. 4 election.