Last Thursday, Mayor Eric Adams showed up to a Zoom meeting with Muslim advocates anxious to express their concerns about his statements over the war between Hamas and Israel — but participants say they left with more worries than when the meeting began.
“A lot of us had the feeling we were reliving 9/11 and the post-9/11 response with saber-rattling from politicians,” said Bader El-Ghussein, a Palestinian-American physician who joined the call and whose family recently fled Gaza City.
Since Hamas’ surprise attack against Israel on Oct. 7, Adams and many other Democrats have strongly defended Israel’s military response. New York City, which is home to more than 1.5 million Jewish residents, has the largest Jewish population outside of Israel. Adams also courted Orthodox Jewish voting blocs throughout his career as a Brooklyn Democrat.
The mayor has also simultaneously sought to build ties with the city’s large Muslim community. In public remarks, he often recounts his criticism of the NYPD for its illegal surveillance of Muslims following the 9/11 attacks and of the hate crimes the community experienced. Two months ago, he announced a plan that would allow mosques across the city to perform a weekly broadcast of the Muslim call to prayer, the adhan.
Now, much of that goodwill appears to have evaporated as some Muslim New Yorkers have criticized Adams’ recent statements as inaccurate and one-sided. The ongoing war has already claimed thousands of Palestinian and Israeli lives.
A low point in the mayor’s relationship with local Muslims came during the Zoom meeting last week, according to four participants on the call who recounted the experience to Gothamist. They said the mayor struck a patronizing tone and showed little interest in hearing their perspective.
Coming into the meeting, which was hosted by NYPD officials and had more than 80 attendees, Muslim leaders had criticized Adams for failing to acknowledge the deaths of innocent Palestinians and distinguish civilians from Hamas militants in his rhetoric since the attack. They asked him to retract his statements.
But Adams, who is known for openly denouncing his detractors, admonished those who criticized him for his stance toward the Israel-Hamas war.
“He was scolding us,” said Lamis Deek, a Palestinian-American lawyer who works on human rights issues and helped organize last Friday’s demonstration in Times Square. “We’re trying to organize [the Oct. 13] rally and he’s trying to lecture us on the importance of supporting Israel.”
“It was appalling and so deeply offensive,” she added.
Deek said she tried to tell Adams that his remarks essentially amounted to “throwing Muslims and their allies under the bus.”
Adams had called people who participated in a pro-Palestinian rally one day after the Oct. 7 attack “extremists.” On the call, Deek warned that such rhetoric could lead to violence against Muslims.
Then, she said, the mayor then began to speak over her and a Zoom host muted her.
In a statement provided to Gothamist after this story was initially published, Liz Garcia, a spokesperson for Adams, said his administration has hosted “several public and private security briefings, including multiple focused on the security of the city’s Muslim communities,” since last weekend, but did not specify the meeting with Muslim advocates last Thursday. Garcia noted that Adams has ordered the NYPD to “surge additional resources to schools and houses of worship, including mosques, across the five boroughs to ensure that they are safe and that our city remains a place of peace.”
“Mayor Adams has made clear that hate and violence towards any community in New York City — whether Jewish or Muslim, Israeli or Palestinian, or any other ethnic or religious group — is unacceptable,” she said. “To be clear, hate has no place in New York City, and any act of antisemitism, Islamophobia, or any other form of bigotry will not be tolerated. Hamas is a terrorist organization that Mayor Adams has made abundantly clear in no way reflects the Muslim community in our city or Islam around the world.”
In his criticisms of a controversial pro-Palestinian protest in Times Square one day after the Hamas attack, Adams pointed to an instance of a protester holding a swastika — the image of which drew widespread outrage.
“I thought it was insensitive and despicable that while people were kidnapped, murdered, children were assassinated, that anyone would show symbols of hate,” Adams told reporters on Tuesday.
But he has also falsely characterized the Democratic Socialists of America's participation in the rally, telling MSNBC on Monday that the “DSA and others [were] carrying swastikas and calling for the extermination of Jewish people.” (DSA members later slammed Adams’ comments as untrue and inflammatory.)
Other people who spoke on the call were also muted before they could ask the mayor follow-up questions, said participant Somia Elrowmeim, who founded Union of Arab Women, a group that advocates for the rights of Arab women.
Elrowmeim said she and others had wanted Adams to issue a statement condemning Israel’s attacks on Gaza and its evacuation order that has displaced hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.
Abdul Aziz Bhuiyan, a member of the Islamic Leadership Council of New York, said he and others in his group were so angry with the mayor’s tone that they elected not to speak at all during the Zoom meeting.
“He lectured us,” Bhuiyan said. “We’re not children. We are mature adults.”
He also accused Adams of dividing the Jewish and Muslim communities.
“People’s words mean something,” Bhuiyan told Gothamist. “This is our country. If you create divisions and frictions within the community, you’ll have to deal with it.”
The mayor's rhetoric slightly shifted after the Zoom meeting. During a public safety briefing with Gov. Kathy Hochul, who was also accused of ignoring the plight of Palestinians, Adams called on New Yorkers to pray “for all those on both sides suffering the horrors of wars.”
The next morning, he spoke about the importance of differentiating Hamas from Islam during an appearance on “The Reset Show,” a livestreamed radio program that targets a Black audience.
“Hamas' actions were terrorism,” Adams said. “It was not Islam, and I think it's wrong if we demonize Islam and Muslims based on the action of terrorists.”
After a deadly explosion of a hospital in Gaza on Tuesday, Adams issued a statement saying the city was mourning “the loss of more innocent lives in this war.”
“The images we are seeing tonight in Gaza are gut-wrenching, and as we await confirmation of details from our intelligence community on how this terrible tragedy unfolded, everyone must do everything in their power to prevent any further killing of innocent civilians,” he added.
For some Muslim New Yorkers, those remarks may amount to too little, too late.
Shahana Hanif, the first Muslim woman elected to the City Council, said she has spent the week fielding complaints about Adams’ rhetoric from many Muslims, including city employees. Still, she credited the mayor for his previous engagement with historically marginalized groups.
Last year, John Miller, a former NYPD intelligence and counterterrorism official, falsely stated that police never surveilled Muslims after 9/11. But after criticism from Hanif and others, Adams convened a closed-door meeting with Muslim community leaders.
At the time, Hanif said, the mayor said “all the right things,” assuring the attendees that his administration would “undo that history.”
Adams has tapped several Muslims in high-profile positions, including Muhammad Faridi, the first Muslim American to serve on a panel in charge of NYPD oversight; Ahsan Chughtai, a senior adviser; and Asim Rehman, who heads the powerful agency that resolves disputes over noncriminal summonses.
Adams has also convened multiple cultural and interfaith events while in office, including a “Breaking Bread” initiative he began as Brooklyn borough president that tries to get a diverse array of New Yorkers to share a meal.
But Hanif said none of these efforts have seemed to matter at a time when Muslims need the mayor’s ear.
“This moment is very telling that the relationships aren’t built on depth,” Hanif said. “Flag-raising and bringing folks together is simply not enough.”
Elrowmeim, the Union of Arab Women founder, said she recently held a training session where multiple Muslim women spoke of hearing anti-Islamic comments on the city’s streets and subways.
In Chicago, a 6-year-old Palestinian-American boy was fatally stabbed in what police say was an anti-Muslim hate crime.
“We have to stop hate against the Muslim community,” Elrowmeim said in a text message to Gothamist.
She then added a phrase that the mayor has used to describe the feelings of many Jewish New Yorkers right now.
“We are not OK,” she wrote.
This story has been updated with comment from Adams' office and a more clear description of the zoom call.
