New York Muslims see gains 25 years after 9/11

New York's Muslim communities are describing a changed city 25 years after the September 11 attacks, pointing to the election of Zohran Mamdani as the city's first Muslim mayor, public prayers in Times Square and new mosques, while saying Islamophobia persists.

The 2001 attacks killed nearly 3,000 people after hijacked airliners were flown into the World Trade Center in Manhattan and the Pentagon outside Washington. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania after a passenger revolt.

In the years that followed, Muslims in the United States reported increased public assaults and harassment. In New York, police surveilled hundreds of Muslims as part of counterterrorism efforts, often targeting people without evidence of wrongdoing.

Asad Dandia, a historian who was eight at the time of the attacks, said an NYPD informant later infiltrated a charity he had started when he was a college student. Dandia and rights groups later won a legal settlement that restricted similar surveillance programs and established a watchdog to monitor the police force.

Mohammed Razvi, who founded the Council of Peoples Organization after 9/11, said Muslims trying to live the American dream were blamed for something they had no role in.

Mamdani, who took his oath of office on a Quran, has become a symbol of the community's growing political visibility. But anti-Muslim rhetoric has continued, including a March rally outside the mayor's residence and comments from a conservative senator saying Mamdani should be sent to Guantanamo Bay.