New York City (NYC) mayoral candidate and Democratic Socialist Zohran Mamdani clarified that the aunt he claimed was a victim of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attack due to her fear of wearing a hijab was actually his “father’s cousin.”
When asked by a reporter about how he had “referenced” his aunt and the alleged harassment she faced after the September 11th terrorist attack, Mamdani clarified that she was actually his “father’s cousin.”
“I was speaking about my aunt, I was speaking about Zehra Fuhi — my father’s cousin, who sadly passed away a few years ago,” Mamdani said. “For the takeaway, for my more than 10-minute address about Islamophobia in this race and this city, to be the question of my aunt tells you everything about Andrew Cuomo.”
The New York Post reported that “fuhi means paternal aunt in Urdu and Hindi.”
The outlet also noted that after Mamdani’s comments attempting to paint his “aunt” as a victim of the September 11 attacks, and how she was afraid to wear her hijab on the subway, people pointed out that Mamdani’s only aunt had “lived in Tanzania” at the time:
Internet sleuths later claimed that a public health consultant, Masuma Mamdani, was the Democratic nominee’s only aunt, posting photos of her in which she appeared without a hijab and noting that she lived in Tanzania on 9/11.
Mamdani’s explanation came after he stated, while speaking outside of the Islamic Cultural Center of The Bronx, that his aunt “stopped taking the subway” after September 11 “because she did not feel safe in her hijab.”
“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” Mamdani stated.
Breitbart News’s Amy Furr reported that Mamdani also stated:
“Over these last few days, these lessons have become the closing messages of Andrew Cuomo and Curtis Sliwa and Eric Adams. Yesterday, Andrew Cuomo laughed and agreed when a radio host said that I would cheer another 9/11,” he stated.
Mamdani’s comment was met with criticism from people such as Vice President JD Vance.
“According to Zohran the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks,” Vance wrote in a post on X.
“He cried for his aunt’s fear of the subway,” Reza Chowdhury, the CEO and Founder of AlleyWatch wrote in a post. “Most New Yorkers cried for the associates, friends, family, sons, daughters, parents, parents of friends, colleagues, etc. they lost forever on that dreadful day.”
“Zohran, my mom was a detective on the NYPD’s Medical Examiner’s Office on 9/11,” Harrison Fields, a former White House spokesman, wrote in a post. “If you want to know the victims of 9/11, she’d be happy to fill you in.”
“You know what I think was the worst part of 9/11?” another person wrote. “The murdering of 3,000 innocent Americans by radical Islamic terrorists, but that’s just me.”
