Mamdani's speech
In Zohran Mamdani's remarkable speech on the 24th of October 2025 the candidate for the mayor of New York city brought to bear the rigour of his academic father to understand and define a pressing problem and the artistry of his filmmaker mother to, in less than 10 minutes, communicate it.1 Which is not only the reality of Islamophobia...
...but also what sets it apart from many other forms of hate, which is how acceptable it is in polite Western society.
From Nyc
As evidence Mamdani pointed out out, among other examples from New York, how the Islamophobic attacks on him by his fellow candidates Cuomo, Sliwa, and Adams, rather than being disqualifying, are instead seen as an acceptable part of American politics.
To the World
While Mamdani has the discipline of a politician to stay focused on the world of New York politics, I will add other examples, such as when Muslim scientists are murdered by Western or Western backed intelligence agencies2 3, Western media do not describe it for what it is, cowardly assassinations of unarmed civilians, but instead as some sort of James Bond level masterstrokes against nefarious evildoers with a lot of oohing and aahing at the horrific technology brought to bear and not much, if any, mind paid to such thing as due process or anyone else that was hurt or died in the process. That's the worth of Muslim lives in the Western media.
The harrowing reality is that this kind of sentiment is what makes it possible for us in the West to shrug our shoulders at Palestinian children with sniper bullets in their brains courtesy of that Western ally, the Zionist state of Israel, and allow that genocidal country to remain in Western institutions such as sporting events and academic programs and receive tax subsidized dollars from our charities.
Because it is a small step from not condemning the Islamophobic lie that Mamdani would cheer another 9/11, to deeming the wholesale slaughter of Palestinians as, at best, a lower priority in our politics, to be set aside at a moment's notice and to disparage those who make genocide a redline as purveyors of 'purity politics', whatever the hell that means.
Words are powerful and also just wind
The acceptability of Islamophobia in the West covers the unacceptable Western funding and arming of atrocities against the Palestinian people and allows for the sanitization of it by the Western media. Mamdani, and others, are ripping that cover away and exposing the ugly and naked truth. Which is that it is not Muslims and Islam that are to be feared, but the rotten Western support for the genocidal and Zionist state of Israel. Unfortunately, sunlight is not enough of a disinfectant. Mamdani's speech is powerful but in the end words are just wind when not backed up by action. At the very very least we must speak, vote, boycott, divest, and sanction, until liberty for Palestinians is achieved. It is the only way to even begin to atone for what we are complicit in.
All opinions my own, in the end only God knows best.