NEW YORK CITY — Local Muslim activists planned a protest outside Gracie Mansion on Tuesday night, May 26, 2026, accusing New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani of promoting an extreme form of Islamism. The demonstration was organized by the group End Jew Hatred in coalition with Muslim, Jewish, and Christian organizations, including the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council and the Catholic League.

Anila Ali, president of the American Muslim & Multifaith Women’s Empowerment Council, said she planned to join the protest because she believes Mamdani’s politics are alienating moderate Muslims and damaging Muslim-Jewish relations in New York. “With Mamdani in office, we feel our religion is now hijacked once again and is being used by these Islamists,” she said.

Ali described Islamism as a hardline political ideology that merges religion and politics. She stated that Mamdani’s support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, his comments on Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state, and his defense of slogans such as “globalize the intifada” have alienated many moderate Muslims and worsened Muslim-Jewish tensions in New York.

“Zohran Mamdani is their success story. The Muslim Brotherhood, they backed him,” she said. She described Mamdani’s politics as part of a “red-green alliance” between Islamist activists and the far left and warned that New York risks following the path of British cities such as Bradford, Birmingham, and Manchester, which she described as overtaken by extremism and division.

“[Mamdani] starts teaching our kids, Muslim kids and American kids, Islamism 101,” she said, referring to what she described as efforts to normalize Islamist political ideology through activism and identity politics. “But more importantly, what he’s done is he’s damaged interfaith relations. He’s damaged the image of Islam.”

Ali, who described herself as part of a post-9/11 movement of “moderate Muslims” who reject Islamist extremism and believe Islam is compatible with coexistence, religious freedom, and life in America, expressed concern about broader implications. “They start with the Jewish people — that’s not where they’re going to end,” she said. “The radical Islamism, it’s just unbearable to see what’s happened to the UK.”