This week, democratic socialist Zoran Mamdani made history by becoming the first Muslim mayor of New York City. His path to victory was anything but smooth. After his historic victory in the mayoral primary, he faced a landslide of attacks from across the political spectrum. In the months that followed, hateful rhetoric from right-wing agitators, social media figures, and even three of his opponents surged.
Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa claimed that President Mamdani supports “global jihad”. Independent candidate and former New York governor Andrew Cuomo agreed with Mamdani’s comment that he would be celebrating “9/11 again.” And outgoing New York City Mayor Eric Adams, who resigned to support Mr. Cuomo, suggested that Mamdani’s appointment as mayor would turn New York state into Europe, where “Islamic extremists…are destroying communities.”
Sadly, as researchers of anti-Muslim bias and as Muslims who came of age in post-9/11 America, we know that these types of attacks on a person’s character and suitability for a job based on their religious background or country of origin are not entirely unexpected. We know that Islamophobia spikes not after acts of violence, but during election campaigns and political events, where anti-Muslim rhetoric is used as a political tactic to rally support for a particular candidate or policy.
Alarmingly, these attacks also reflect a general trend of rising Islamophobia, which our research recently revealed. The latest edition of the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding’s (ISPU) American Muslim Poll, released on October 21, includes an Islamophobia index and reveals that Islamophobia has increased sharply across nearly every demographic group in the United States over the past three years.
Among the general U.S. population, on a scale of 1 to 100, this index increased from a score of 25 in 2022 to a score of 33 in 2025. The increase was most pronounced among white evangelicals, whose scores increased from 30 to 45 between 2022 and 2025, and among Catholics, whose scores increased from 28 to 40 over the same period. Protestants also increased by 7 points, from 23 points in 2022 to 30 points in 2025. Jews’ Islamophobia score in 2022 was 17, the lowest of any group in the same year, but rose slightly in 2025 to 19, the same score as Muslims in 2025. The only group that has not changed since 2022 is the independents.
Without a doubt, the weaponization of Islamophobia by celebrities is a major driver of this worrying trend. And that can have devastating consequences for Muslims, from job loss and the inability to worship freely to religious-based bullying and public discrimination against Muslim children in public schools and even physical violence. Simply put, dangerous rhetoric can have dangerous consequences.
Much of this Islamophobic rhetoric relies on five common stereotypes about Muslims, which we used to create our index: That is, Muslims condone violence, discriminate against women, are hostile to the United States, are less civilized, and are complicit in acts of violence committed by Muslims elsewhere. They then surveyed a nationally representative sample of 2,486 Americans to determine the extent to which they believed these metaphors.
More and more Americans are accepting these stereotypes about Muslims, even if they are easily disproved.
For example, despite common media depictions of Muslims as vulnerable to violence or complicit in violence perpetrated by Muslims in other parts of the world, ISPU research shows that American Muslims overwhelmingly reject violence. They are more likely than the general public to reject violence perpetrated by the military against civilians, and just as likely to reject individual actors who target civilians.
The common stereotype that Muslim communities discriminate against women is also unfounded. In fact, Muslim women are exposed to more racial and religious discrimination than gender discrimination, and all women, Muslim or not, report experiencing equal discrimination in the United States. The majority (99%) of Muslim women who wear hijab say they do so out of personal dedication and choice, rather than compulsion. And Muslim women report that their faith is a source of pride and happiness.
Our research also proves contrary to the idea that most Muslims living in the United States are hostile to the United States. We find that Muslims with a strong religious identity are more likely to hold a strong American identity than Muslims with a weak religious identity. It also shows how Muslims are participating in public life from the local to the national level through civic engagement, working with neighbors to solve local problems, and contributing during national crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the Flint water crisis.
The metaphor that most Muslims living in the United States are less “civilized” than other peoples also has no basis in fact. The use of the binary “civilized or uncivilized” strips individuals of their human dignity and separates people into false ethnocentric hierarchies based on race and religion. Accusing one group of being less civilized than another is a common dehumanizing tactic. Dehumanization, as defined by Genocide Watch, is when one group denies the humanity of another group and is a step on the path to genocide.
We have seen all these metaphors invoked in the past few weeks to launch Islamophobic attacks against Mamdani. And we’ve seen too many politicians and celebrities feel comfortable using them in public speeches, putting entire faith communities at risk. As Mamdani said in a speech addressing Islamophobic attacks by fellow candidates, “In an era of increasingly tenuous bipartisanship, Islamophobia appears to be emerging as one of the few areas of agreement.”
But Islamophobia is not only bad for Muslims, it undermines our democracy and constitutional freedoms. Research shows that belief in these anti-Muslim tropes is linked to increased tolerance for anti-democratic policies. People who hold Islamophobic beliefs are more likely to agree with restrictions on democratic freedoms when the country is under threat (suspending checks and balances, restricting press freedom), condoning military and personal attacks against civilians (war crimes under the Geneva Conventions), and approving discriminatory policies targeting Muslims (banning Muslims from entering the country, monitoring mosques, and even restricting voting rights).
Weaponizing Islamophobia in political speech may be perceived as a winning strategy to rally support, but the communities in which it is deployed ultimately lose. That is why such practices must be challenged. Confronting and condemning hatred means defending democracy and human dignity. Perhaps Mamdani’s election will signal a serious shift from this political strategy. As the mayor-elect said in his acceptance speech, “New York will no longer be a city where you can traffic in Islamophobia to win elections.”
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial policy.
