The Tamesis
Last summer, when I was eight months pregnant, I found myself watching a comedy show in the velvety dark glow of the Beacon Theatre. At one point in the night, performed by Egyptian-American comedian Ramy Youssef, Youssef pulled Palestinian-Algerian student activist Mahmoud Khalil onto the stage, and then unexpectedly, out walked Zohran Mamdani, our elected Muslim mayor and someone I’ve worked with as an activist for years. This is a political moment that even I, a Muslim political organizer born in Queens, could not have imagined.
My son moved and kicked me and I put my hand on my stomach. In eight years, he’ll be eight, I think. Eight years from now, God, he’ll probably grow up knowing only one New York City with a Muslim as mayor. A city where his name will not be a burden. In this city, his mother’s hijab wouldn’t be a target. perhaps.
when I At eight years old, this city had already taught me how quickly a sense of belonging can be achieved. This was after 9/11, and the FBI was kidnapping and surveilling people who lived in our neighborhood. Overnight, the uncles who once roared confidently on Steinway Street shaved off their beards and called themselves “Joe” instead of “Youssef,” “Moe” instead of “Mohamed,” “Al” instead of “Ali”; whatever felt safest. Women swapped hijabs and abayas for baseball caps and jeans, anything to help them blend into the background.
My identity changed from Egyptian to Muslim Suspect Within a week’s time. Even when I found the courage and self-love to embrace my hijab, even when I found myself soft enough to pronounce my name like my mother did—Lana, with a tender voice r—I also found myself dealing with a world that didn’t know what to make of girls like me except with distrust.
When a man first tried to pull off my hijab, the power of that moment stayed with me longer than his grip. It changed the course of my life. I became a martial artist and then a self-defense instructor. When I was 16, I founded Malikah, a non-profit dedicated to helping women feel powerful and safe.
For nearly 20 years, I’ve been teaching Muslim women in New York City how to protect themselves from shoving and hijab grabbing, techniques that were actually created in response to the violence we experience. For nearly 20 years, I’ve seen the same demons stirred up every election cycle: Islamophobic intimidation, cryptic language, explicit threats.
An evening at the Beacon Theater should be pure joy. When I was a kid, it was unthinkable for a Muslim to be elected mayor of New York City. This was supposed to be my peace. But even as we celebrate, the context cannot be ignored. Zoran’s campaign was a battleground, amplified by trolls, bots, and political opportunists who knew exactly how to weaponize his—and mine and a million other people in this city’s—identity. The Center for the Study of Organized Hate found that anti-Muslim and xenophobic tweets reached unprecedented levels after Zoran accepted the Democratic mayoral candidacy, with 35,522 messages labeling Zoran a “terrorist” or “radical” reaching more than 1.5 billion people. All of this is not happening in a vacuum, but in an increasingly hostile political environment at home and abroad. At the Malika Safe Center, a mutual aid center I run, we heard about nurses who wore hijabs and were followed home after working the night shift. Workers fired for their political views. Teenagers disciplined for wearing pro-Palestinian badges. Grandmothers are afraid to speak Arabic on the bus. The city has yet to learn how to keep its Muslim community safe. If anything, the visibility of our Muslim mayor only goes to show how fragile progress is.
