Militant Islam’s reworking of religious war is a phenomenon that much of the Western establishment continues to deny or downplay.
Militant Islam’s reworking of religious war is a phenomenon that much of the Western establishment continues to deny or downplay.
A plane flown by murderers swept out of a legendarily bright blue sky. I was at an equities desk in midtown Manhattan, tapping messages on my Bloomberg terminal, occasionally glancing at CNBC. All was normal until it wasn’t. The images on the TV screen were business until they weren’t. Smoke pouring out of a scarred World Trade Center tower. Something had torn into it, but what, and why? A small plane? An accident? Guesses from a different era.
Then the pause we did not know was a pause, filled by staring at the TV, CNN now, and, for me, a call across the Atlantic to reassure my parents. They knew I went to business meetings in the WTC.
The second tower was struck, the first draft of answers to questions that grew darker and larger: the Pentagon, the fall of the South Tower, Flight 93, the fall of the North Tower.
Once outside, I saw a mass of people trudging up from the tip of the island and huge plumes of smoke in the distance. An acrid smell came and went with the breeze and would for a long time. Fliers appeared on walls giving contact details for the lost, their names, often their pictures. Surely they were injured but alive in a hospital somewhere, surely. Paper from vanished offices had fluttered from the towers: I picked up a piece in Brooklyn a day or two later. For a while afterwards a couple of dust-covered fire engines were parked by the firehouse near where I lived. Ten of the brave men who left from there that morning never returned.
Amplifying the shock was that this had taken place on the continental U.S., which had been spared serious attack by a military power since the War of 1812. There had been acts of foreign terrorism over the years, but they were rare and typically fairly small in scale, although the aim of the Islamic terrorists responsible for the 1993 WTC bombing — to topple one tower into another — promised much worse to come. Americans’ concern about terrorism spiked after the Oklahoma and 1993 WTC bombings, but for the most part it lurked in the background. In contrast with the Cold War period, most Americans felt safe in a homeland protected by two oceans. An illusion, we learned.
But an even more dangerous illusion survived, and, strange as it may seem to say in light of the years of warfare that ensued, it meant that 9/11 did not provoke the truly fundamental American policy rethink that it merited. Justifiable optimism after the Soviet collapse mutated into a teleological conviction that the way had been cleared for an ultimately irresistible ascent to a peaceful, prosperous, and more democratic world.
Militant Islam’s reworking of religious war is a phenomenon that much of the Western establishment not only finds bewildering but also continues, even after 9/11, to deny or downplay. It simply cannot be reconciled with its belief that the great ideological struggles of the past are over, and it mocks their orthodoxies about multiculturalism, immigration, and the interplay between the two.
Muslims in the West should be treated no better and no worse than the followers of any other religion. The unwillingness of Western ruling classes to engage honestly with the implications of Islam’s harder edges for their domestic politics is a reflection, not of tolerance but, depending on who is turning the blind eye, of cowardice, cynicism, self-loathing, or kumbaya — made easier to get away with by the use of accusations of “Islamophobia.”
The muting of Islam’s critics is far more extensive in Western Europe and, on a continent without a First Amendment, increasingly has the force of law. This is not only an affront to free speech but, to the extent it insulates Islam from the rough and tumble of debate, is also a gift to Muslim hardliners. It may well be one reason why a noticeable number of Europe’s later-generation Muslim immigrants are more radical than their parents or grandparents.
State-sanctioned multiculturalism further slows integration, as does continuing high immigration from Islamic countries. On the other hand, Muslim voters appear to be throwing their weight behind established political parties, primarily on the left, a form of integration to be sure, but it can come with a double edge. Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of France’s hard left LFI, a leading contender in next year’s presidential election and the subject of disturbing allegations of antisemitism, dismisses talk of “Islamo-leftism,” but then he would.
The U.S. has a far lower percentage of Muslims (maybe 1.6 percent), than Western Europe (perhaps 6-8 percent), but in this country, too, immigration has contributed to a substantial increase from the level of a quarter of a century ago, including in New York City. The widely cited figure that one in nine New Yorkers is Muslim is based on community estimates and could be exaggerated, while the (small) 2023 Public Religion Research Institute survey-based finding of 3 percent could easily be too low.
Whatever their actual numbers, Muslims, despite their overwhelming support for Zohran Mamdani in New York’s 2025 mayoral election, are thought to have accounted for only about 4 percent of the vote for the city’s first Muslim mayor. Mamdani owed his win to the massive majority he secured among voters under the age of 44, many of whom were too young to remember 9/11 or who were living elsewhere back then.
Mamdani did not prevail because of Islam, or Palestine, or even, despite a disproportionate contribution from the college-educated youngsters of the “commie corridor” in Brooklyn and Queens, elite overproduction (although that reinforced the prominence of “affordability” as an issue). He won because he was an attractive, cleverly packaged candidate who fought a skillful, in-touch campaign against incompetent opposition. It is nevertheless symptomatic of changed times, a changed city, and changed attitudes on the left that his hostility to Israel, however packaged, and behavior such as his reluctance to condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” did him little or no material harm.
Add fading memories or distorted history lessons to the mix, and the same might be said of the reaction to Mamdani’s approach to 9/11, quite a bit of which has involved spreading the victimhood around. A schoolboy of nine in Manhattan back then, he recalled being warned by a teacher that he might be bullied. An “aunt” (long story) stopped “taking the subway after September 11 because she did not feel safe in a hijab.” 9/11 was “this horrific day that was also for many New Yorkers the moment at which they were marked an ‘other.’” For some years, the tweets he posted to commemorate the anniversary of 9/11 paired the deaths that day with the deaths of those in the wars that followed, an emphasis that shifted markedly after he was on the verge of being elected mayor.
And Mamdani has been content to be associated with the extremist influencer Hasan Piker (whose rise is another symptom of America’s mutating left). In 2019 Piker said that the U.S. “deserved” to be attacked on 9/11. He quickly backtracked, while regretting that he had given “the right” an opportunity “to morally grandstand on an issue like this, when they are 100% responsible for all the bloodshed that’s been caused.” Even as the Democratic nominee for the mayoralty, Mamdani was unwilling to opine on Piker’s comments, only denouncing them as “objectionable and reprehensible” when pressed during a mayoral debate.
At a ceremony last week, Mamdani signed two executive orders related to 9/11 — one designating September 11 as a day of remembrance, the other strengthening New York City’s emergency response program — and then asked Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch to pass the signature pen to Mamdani’s chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, a zealous supporter of the Palestinian cause and an attorney whose clients have included Ahmed al-Darbi, who pled guilty to helping plan and arrange al-Qaeda’s bombing of a French oil tanker.
Every defendant is entitled to representation, but giving Kassem that pen was a statement.
There have been other Islamist-inspired terrorist attacks in New York City since 9/11. Many more have been thwarted by effective policework. When it comes to counterterrorism, Mamdani has criticized police surveillance tactics, but much of that was focused on a long-disbanded unit. Perhaps encouragingly, neither he nor Governor Kathy Hochul has been shy about demanding $87 million in counterterrorism funding that they maintain New York City is due from the Department of Homeland Security, although lambasting the Trump administration on this topic must have had its own appeal. Overall, Mamdani has not had a lot to say about new policies in this area. That could be good news or bad, but he must know that in the age of the drone and the gray zone, the opportunities open to terrorists are multiplying. He won’t want Islamist attacks on the city on his watch.
That said, some of his key constituencies may stand in the way of doing what needs to be done to keep Gotham as safe from terrorism as possible. More broadly, as mayor, Mamdani will, either actively or just by his presence, encourage and shape the growing radicalization of New York’s left. That is unlikely to be helpful.
On the night of September 14, 2001, I was in Union Square. Some of those present had messages of “peace” to deliver and to sing, but (I wrote for NRO at the time):
We are downtown, a place where people prefer to do their own thing, so others, less political, start to sing different songs, from slow tunes to show tunes (“New York, New York,” extempore and ragged, never sounded better), from pop hits to, several times, “The Star-Spangled Banner. ” In an age of recorded music, we no longer remember lyrics, but two men who do, lead the way, coordinating the effort for the rest of us. It was a memorial service, Big Apple style, moving and raucous, a wake, a party and a jam session. Someone starts playing a sax. To add to the din, a jet, a fighter, swoops low overhead. In our newly learned reflex, we all look up.
There are cheers too, cheers for the fire truck making its way further downtown, and applause as someone succeeds, finally, in placing a little American flag in the hand of the statue of Washington that stands in the middle of the square. As the Stars and Stripes slide into old George’s metal grasp, the refrain goes out, “U.S.A., U.S.A., U.S.A.”
How much of that New York remains?