Israeli Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli’s reaction to Zohran Mamdani’s election as mayor of New York offers a textbook example of the West’s moral misunderstanding of Muslims. Chikli wasn’t expressing a uniquely Israeli anxiety. His warning – “New York is walking with open eyes into the abyss that London already fell into” – echoes the same far-right rhetoric we heard when Sadiq Khan won the mayoralty of London.
Yet nothing collapsed. London preserved its multicultural fabric, embracing nearly every faith. Khan never claimed to represent only the city’s Muslims. The same will happen with Mamdani. New York will not fall into any abyss, just as London didn’t. And Donald Trump’s declaration that any Jewish voter supporting Mamdani is “a fool” will dissolve into toxic dust floating above the American political landscape.
Mamdani’s victory – alongside at least 38 other Muslim candidates elected to various state and municipal offices – signals a deeper shift. Muslims are no longer on the margins of American cities; they are shaping them, competing for their highest offices, and redefining civic identity.
His boldness and refusal to engage in divisive debates define his role in this transformation. In his victory speech, Mamdani said: “I refuse to apologise for being Muslim, or young, or a democratic socialist.”
Trump’s populist rhetoric about “foolishness” reveals a deeper Western confusion in how Muslims are perceived—despite being vital contributors to the very cities they are now helping lead.
Still, I once met a mid-level official at the US State Department who admitted, with surprising candour, that American foreign policy often has no real grasp of what’s happening in the Arab world.
This particular official spoke with striking fluency about Libya—its tribal structures, its anti-colonial resistance, even the poetry of Ali Sidqi Abd al-Qadir and the novels of Ibrahim al-Koni and Sadiq al-Nayhoum. When I shifted the conversation toward Iraq, he didn’t falter. It was as if he were reading from an internal notebook, not a briefing memo.
I asked him: “How many like you are there in the State Department?” He replied: “Unfortunately, not many.”
Then came Josef Burton, the US consul in Turkey, who exposed a deeper crisis: that of conscience. In a piece published in The Guardian, Burton wrote: “When I began working as a consular officer at the US Embassy in Ankara, I didn’t love all aspects of U.S. foreign policy. But I was committed to treating every visa applicant fairly and helping people pursue the American dream. Then came Trump’s Muslim ban.”
Suddenly, his routine job became an ethical minefield. He was no longer facilitating dreams—he was denying them, based on faith. “The most important part of my resignation,” he wrote, “was resisting the smugness and arrogance with which America treats the Muslim ‘other’.”
Burton believes that junior diplomats placed in the same position will feel disgusted—and will try to push back. But their resistance won’t fix the system. Senior officials, meanwhile, will continue to distance themselves from yet another stain on the national conscience.
Burton, who had served in India and Turkey, resigned because he realised that resisting a racist political project from within is a losing bargain with the source of power itself.
We won’t find many like him. But this isn’t just about misunderstanding—it’s about a political arrogance that sees itself above humanity.
We have no shortage of examples. From Chikli’s imagined abyss to Trump’s insults, the cultural hostility is real. It’s a cheap fantasy that conflates identity with threat—a fantasy that fuels the toxic rhetoric surrounding Mamdani’s rise. But for the more than 50,000 volunteers who rallied behind his campaign, Mamdani’s candidacy meant something far greater. To them, he represents a beacon of hope—at a time when the progressive political horizon in America grows darker by the day.
From London to New York, it’s not Muslims who are falling into the abyss—it’s the Western discourse that keeps failing the moral test. Between Sadiq Khan and Zohran Mamdani, it’s not the cities that change, but the mirrors they hold up to themselves.
Author: Karam Nana
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