Uncle Haroon Warned You About Zohran Mamdani

The problem with young people, Shadi Hamid is on Avenue M, and yes Haroon's actually drinking Adeni chai while he writes this

If you’re like me, lots of people you know are excited or at least intrigued by Zohran Mamdani’s victory, a sharp contrast to a national conversation where the Americans who still think they get to decide who we can vote for are either outraged or despondent. It seems plenty of old school Dems, not having learned their lesson from the epic immolation of the Biden campaign, or the self-inflicted struggles of Harris’ last-second substitution, are actually genuinely surprised that the widely-disgraced Andrew The Status Cuomo did not in fact experience the resurrection a lot of obscenely wealthy people believed was his due and their right.

Ross Barkan

has written one of the best antidotes to the insanity coursing through too much of that America right now, which I highly recommend you read, not least for the last two paragraphs that begin thusly…

At some point, the hyperbole will die down. Mamdani is pro-Palestine, but will strain to avoid foreign policy discussions as mayor. He did not run a mayoral campaign on BDS or anti-Zionism. He did not run a campaign on defunding the police, either. New York Jews will be safe under Mamdani because he is a savvy politician who understands he now must deliver for them in some fashion. He will take their meetings. The ultrawealthy who whine about hiked corporate tax rates must understand that taxes are up to the governor, not the mayor, and Kathy Hochul has already shot down the idea. The good news for Mamdani is that New York’s municipal budget is $115 billion and a nimble, aggressive mayor can drum up funding there for a few city-run grocery stores and, with help from the state, a childcare expansion. Free buses may cost a billion at best, which is small change for the MTA…

But I want to add a complementary perspective, anchored in my experience as an eighteen year-old who moved to New York City for college, who later chose Columbia University in part because he wanted to study with Zohran’s brilliant father, who watched the politics of the city with concern these last few years, who is now Uncle Haroon and teaches young Muslims less than half Zohran’s age, who sees the way Zohran’s victory impacts and uplifts them, and who believes part of his responsibility to God and country includes inspiring and anchoring these young people with a thoughtful approach to their lives and circumstances.

I’m writing, in other words, not just to share why Zohran’s candidacy is so important—it is, after all, historical, but also why his campaign unfolded the way it did, and why this matters, generationally and democratically. There are plenty of analyses that offer valuable perspective you’ll need, and benefit from, but what I say below … that I haven’t heard nearly enough of. A lot of us are thinking it.

Someone needs to say it, a corrective to the caustic or just clueless assumptions that continue to define legacy media (and explain its accelerating decline).

The Biggest Muslim City in the Western Hemisphere You Never Heard Of

We often read that there are perhaps four million Americans who identity as Muslim. This seems like an undercount to me. But let’s say it’s entirely correct. That would mean that 25% of American Muslims are New Yorkers, which feels… awfully unlikely in turn because, well, have you been to Dallas Chicagoland or the Qamaria in Columbus? At least the second statistic is true. There are a lot of Muslims in NYC, which I know for sure, as a longtime New Yorker who built institutions in that great city, who was enmeshed in its Muslim spaces for twenty-some years, who knows the public schools were, even years back, twelve percent Muslim, but who knows that these numbers are almost never discussed when it comes to American Muslims.

We are presumed to live only in specific enclaves (maybe Dearborn, with all due respect to Dearborn), never considered as a political factor and rarely appreciated as people who expect to be treated with decency and dignity and who will politically mobilize if we are not… like all Americans would.

Let me explain what I mean from the perspective of the past two years.

There is, undoubtedly, real anti-Semitism in America and that is a problem. But while we have had national conversations about anti-Semitism, which have driven (in what are sometimes bad faith) all-out assaults on e.g. universities, used as excuses to gut science funding or bash and banish international students, almost preternaturally disconnected from any real concern with (real) bias, there has been almost no conversation about the rampant anti-Muslim sentiment in our country, except why not?¹ That Islamophobia has resulted in shootings and even murders, detentions, widespread harassment and bigotry. Harvard itself admitted to this when its own numbers found more anti-Muslim sentiment than anti-Semitism.

No Muslim I know has ever said “don’t investigate anti-Semitism.” They’ve asked, instead, why we aren’t also investigating Islamophobia. If only some bigotry counts, well, then you’ve arrived at a definition of bigotry in the ostensible land of the free.

Yet I have not heard about Congressional hearings to investigate anti-Muslim hate crimes (please let me know if I’m wrong), but then again, if we don’t care about weapons sales to countries committing war crimes because of who the victims are, then obviously this is a case of a bias that isn’t just overlooked but endorsed at too many high levels. Because while Islamophobia and anti-Semitism are a problem, both aren’t weighed equally, but I repeat myself. Why does that matter? Because people subjected to double standards get sick and tired of the double standard even as they also care about many of the same things their fellow Americans care about.

In the case of Mamdani’s election, we learned at least two things.

First, those subjected to anti-Muslim bias and bigotry aren’t going to descend to hate, but aren’t going to sit quietly on the sidelines, either, something you’d think elite Dems would’ve learned after the Uncommitted Movement helped pull the plug on Biden’s frankly immoral and irresponsible attempt to force his re-election campaign. We American Muslims want to help our country move forward, but we aren’t okay with that coming at the price of our equal participation in our great national project. Whether we’re Democrats or Republicans, centrists or libertarians, progressives or centrists, we expect to be treated as people, for our arguments and concerns to be considered on their face, and for identity and religiosity not to be an operative factor.

That itself surprises a lot of people.

Many, and maybe most, Muslims are not progressives. They are still concerned about the genocide in Gaza, about the unrestrained support of some in our country for endless war, about why we can find money for bombs and not bridges, about why Netanyahu’s needs matter more than, say, cancer research in our country, and in the context of New York City, where there are hundreds of thousands of Muslim voters, these numbers matter. Had anti-Muslim animus not surged in New York these last few years (case in point, what’s happening on campuses), then likely the vote would’ve been more evenly broken down across party line and policy proposals.

That’s not to take away anything from Mamdani’s campaign or his success.

More broadly still, across America, where Muslims are a very small minority, most Americans nevertheless can see very clearly what’s happening in Gaza, the lunacy of claiming we stand for peace while funding war, the fact that somehow DOGE needs to cut, cut, cut, but a spontaneous decision to escalate a grand Middle Eastern war needs no review or consideration, and it’s enough. It’s too much. Let us, actually, put America first, and if those who think they control who gets to speak and about what haven’t yet been disabused of the shift, let them consider that every generation moves on, and that is a good thing, because that means America is still very much alive.

I find it amusing when people say Mamdani has no experience. That he’s a kind of nepo baby. Who was Andrew Cuomo’s dad, after all? Now, privilege isn’t itself a qualification, but the more important question - to me at least - is what do you do with privilege? I’d have never qualified to apply to Columbia if not for a thousand decisions made that I had nothing to do with, but I had that privilege, and I still have experiences and opportunities that come about due to no effort of my own, but the important question - to God and for our conscience - is what we do with these? Do we close the door behind us, or do we channel some humility and seek to enable others to benefit from what we might know or be capable of?

Isn’t that what you took from Mamdani’s appeal? I say this as someone who’s not a democratic socialist but genuinely feels inspired by Zohran’s candidacy and, as a parent and community leader, has seen firsthand the galvanizing and reassuring impact his presence has on our kids and my students. Two weeks ago, when my middle school students sat down to discuss chapter one of The Autobiography of Malcolm X, they were clearly very uncomfortable. They’re too young to have the kinds of experiences even someone like me might have, or to have met many people with memories of Jim Crow, and that hit them so hard, that they looked despondent.

And yes, I said, yes, that was our country, and there is still racism, yes, and we all know about Gaza, but that is not all of our country, not at all, because our country also includes Zohran Mamdani, and they smiled and got excited, because this gave them a topic to focus on. I want them to know the weight of the past and understand the difficulties of the present without giving in to hopelessness and paralysis, and here’s a lesson the Democratic Party too often still does not get, but if you want to move policy, you have to move people, they have to be excited and engaged, and that means fresh faces and fresh ideas, and in a country that’s vigorous, dynamic and energetic, that change will move in directions that shouldn’t be surprising… but somehow still are.

Is no one reading the polls?

Does anyone else know that we can see what’s happening on Instagram and TikTok?

Do I think we can ask hard questions about Zohran’s proposals? Of course we should! (Well, I mean, I’m not a New Yorker anymore, but you know what I mean.) Except pardon us while we point out that, if your hard questions are animated by bias, they are unlikely to be appreciated or engaged. We’ll talk more about Malcolm X this coming Saturday, and more about Zohran, and how Muslims can be inspired by their faith to pursue different kinds of commitments to their community and country, but there’s no genuine faith that doesn’t translate into genuine concern for the world around us, whatever that specifically means.

That’s good for young men to know, I think. Because they need models. Ambitions. Aspirations. And reassurance and direction. And openings. Openings! If the Democratic center why it wonders how it lost so many voters, maybe ask why it’s still so keen to suffocate differences of opinion, even as it should know, these differences represent a solid majority of the Party now. They still think it’s their Party and they’ll damn well cry if they want to. But that doesn’t change reality.

If you’d like to follow along with halaqas anchored in reality, subscribe.

Sunday Schooled is intentionally free.

No Country for Old Men

As many of you know, my friend Joey Taylor and I started a new podcast, Avenue M, and today’s episode — our second! — features an incredible conversation with

Shadi Hamid

, a columnist for The Washington Post, an author, and a fellow podcaster and Substacker, whose work can be found at

Wisdom of Crowds

and his personal Substack,

The Agonist with Shadi Hamid

.

Joey and I started Avenue M with the hopes of creating a platform that reflected our whole selves… and offered people from different backgrounds different means of getting engaged and excited and involved in conversations of urgent concern. Some of our episodes will be about mental health, AI and the economy, masculinity and religion, democracy, the American Civil War, dinosaurs, and stand-up comedy.

As for today? Well, heaven, hell, and the pursuit of happiness, a conversation that was entirely unexpected in the best kind of way.

We knew we wanted to talk to Shadi about Gaza.

We also wanted to talk to him about how he is able to talk about his deep faith, invoke his moral commitments, remain curious about the world, and never present in ways that are high-handed or heavy-handed, balancing his religiosity with his patriotism, his spirituality with a cosmic and global lens, which is not a contradiction… but actually a reflection of how faith should be.

At least, we think so. Give the episode a watch on our YouTube channel or check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and more.

We’ve got a dedicated Substack page as well, where we share episode links, show notes, transcripts and more. Follow the link for all our episodes… and subscribe!

Through platforms like these, we can move our conversation away from zero-sum politics and towards positive frames, where we get to focus on issues that concern us, talk about how to responsibly handle divisions, live up to our values, realize our principles, and think about who we want to be — and what we want to see in our country. That doesn’t mean we’ll always agree.

But as men of faith, and parents of faith, as co-hosts who are part of faith communities, we know this, too: If we want to create better outcomes, we have to invest in the places people are, give them directions to move in, and appreciate when those who are younger than us succeed us and improve on us. That’s a good thing. That’s what keeps communities healthy. And countries strong.

For everyone who points to a young leader and says “he doesn’t have experience!” I’ll just ask: Maybe because nobody ever stepped out of the way? Andrew Cuomo is a symptom of a bigger problem, one that Biden also represented; indeed, Cuomo, now sixty-seven, thought that the way forward was to go backwards… through him. If you really and genuinely believe in God and democracy, you’d know that’s wrong.

None of us is meant to be here forever. What marks success and what marks failure?

Preparing those who will come after you, which begins by recognizing that we aren’t meant to be here forever. Fortunately, people can vote, and they can exercise that vote, and here we are, seven hundred miles from Manhattan, and me thinking, how I longed to see this day, and though I’m now very far away, at least I can see the smiles on their faces, because they get to see this day, and think about what more is possible.

Or, as Shadi put it on our podcast, “America is already great.”

1. Which I’m using as a stand-in for anti-Palestinian and anti-Arab bias, too; really, the people who hate us don’t bother to distinguish us or understand us.