Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, October 27, 2025 Real World News
To drive home his point that Islmaphobia is rampant in some circles in the United States, New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani on Friday choked up as, during a press conference, he told how his aunt had felt unsafe riding the New York subway while wearing her hijab after the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
In the twentieth century, wide-eyed cub reporters would have been warned by cranky editors: “If your mother says she loves you, check it out.”
But this is 2025, and thinking critically and independently could cost hungry reporters their jobs.
New York Times reporter Emma Fitzsimmons “delivered many of the expected tropes from the paper,” in response to Mamdani’s emotional comments, RedState’s Brad Slager noted.
“We literally get ‘Republicans pounced on his comments’ without irony. JD Vance made a post that put this daft weeping comment in perspective, and Fitzsimmons describes this as an ‘attack.’ ”
Mamdani was then permitted to go on at length to state how this response was Islamophobic:
“This is all the Republican Party has to offer,” Mamdani said. “Cheap jokes about Islamophobia so as to not have to recognize what people are living through, attempts to pit peoples’ humanity against each other.”
Major media outlets followed the Times’s lead, repeating Mamdani’s tearful comments, unquestionably.
“But in all of the heartfelt coverage, something was missing: curiosity,” Slager wrote.
Such for news professionals is arguably more essential than writing ability, according to the professional standards of yesteryear.
So it was left to citizen journalists, who smelled the BS, to take action while the legacy media’s “fact checkers” pursued approved targets.
After doing the research, social media users noted that Mamdani’s only aunt, Masuma Mamdani, apparently does not even wear the hijab and was certainly not riding the New York subways in the immediate aftermath of 9/11 as she was residing at the time in Tanzania.
“Now, some might be tempted to say she could have conceivably been traveling in New York and experienced this aggressive atmosphere during her visit,” Slager noted. “But Mamdani’s description is one of an experience by a resident. He says she ‘stopped’ taking the subway after 9/11, implying this was a common practice by his relative that she had to suspend. Still, there is enough plausible deniability to suggest this could have been the case.”
Then, independent journalist Naomi Wolfe was able to pull up the professional background of Masuma Mamdani and found that she specializes in “reproductive and sexual health and rights, gender equality.” That is hardly a field that would be acceptable for a hijab-wearing Muslim, critics said.
This is Zohran Mamdani’s aunt’s bio. A mover and shaker! She allegedly wore a hijab after 9/11 but she is an expert in “reproductive and sexual health and rights, gender equality” and other “haram” or forbidden-in-Islam secular NGO priorities. She also is not wearing hijab in… https://t.co/dP4YxHOnz9 pic.twitter.com/CeWKzwkNvX
— Dr. Naomi Wolf. 8 NYT Bestsellers. DPhil, Poetry. (@naomirwolf) October 26, 2025
Slager pointed out: “These are all details that should have sparked questions and inspired at least a glimmer of investigation from a journalist. These could have been found by any minimally inquisitive reporter who would have been able to glean the facts and offer up as shading and background to any reports.
“The press is in full-scale support mode for this candidate, and objectivity is simply not a component in this election.”
Only citizen journalists used their BS meters on Mamdani’s hijab-wearing aunt added by Editor Two on
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