Muslim first responder's brother defends mayor's 9/11 memorial attendance

Twenty-five years after the September 11th attacks, New York City's first Muslim mayor faces an unexpected pressure: calls from prominent figures, including former Mayor Rudy Giuliani, to absent himself from the city's official memorial ceremony. Mayor Zohran Mamdani has made clear he will attend, his focus trained on the families who lost someone that morning. The controversy has drawn into sharp relief a question that has shadowed the city since 2001: what role does a Muslim American play in remembering a tragedy that was weaponized against Islam itself?

Zeshan Hamdani knows this tension intimately. His older brother, Salman, was a Muslim American police cadet working in the North Tower when it collapsed. Salman died there, one of nearly 3,000 people killed that day. When Zeshan learned that some were suggesting the current mayor—a Muslim—should stay away from the 25th anniversary memorial, he decided to speak. His message was direct: Islam is being hijacked by those who use it as a reason to exclude Muslims from the very act of remembering shared loss.

The politicization of this year's anniversary marks a departure from how previous commemorations have unfolded. The memorial has always been a space where New Yorkers of all backgrounds gathered to honor the dead. But this year, the presence of a Muslim mayor has become a flashpoint, with critics suggesting his attendance would be inappropriate or divisive. Giuliani, who was mayor on the morning of the attacks and whose leadership in the immediate aftermath became central to his political identity, has been among those raising objections.

Mayor Mamdani's response has been measured. He has said simply that he will be there, and that his purpose is to stand with families in their grief. He is not attending as a symbol or a statement. He is attending as the mayor of the city where the attacks happened, where the dead lived and worked, where their families still live.

For Zeshan Hamdani, the attempt to exclude a Muslim from mourning Muslims who died alongside Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, and people of no faith represents something darker than mere political disagreement. It suggests that Muslims cannot be trusted to grieve authentically, that their presence at a memorial is inherently suspect, that Islam itself is the problem rather than the ideology that twisted it into a weapon. His brother's death was not a Muslim tragedy or a Christian tragedy. It was an American tragedy. And an American Muslim should be able to stand at that memorial without controversy.

The 25th anniversary arrives at a moment when questions about Muslim representation in American civic life remain unresolved. Salman Hamdani was a first responder, someone who ran toward danger to help others. He was also Muslim. These facts were not in conflict then, and they should not be in conflict now. Yet here, a quarter-century later, the same tension resurfaces: whether a Muslim can fully belong to the American story, even when that story includes their own loss.

Mayor Mamdani will attend the memorial on September 11th. Zeshan Hamdani will be there too, carrying the memory of his brother and the weight of what it means to defend that memory against those who would use it as a reason to exclude.