Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani: As-salaam alaykum, my friends. Ramadan Kareem. I have been looking forward to this evening for a long time. It is not every day that we gather workers of this city, those who touch every corner of the five boroughs, to join together for an Iftar. And it is not every day that we see in one room the sheer breadth of Muslim life in New York City. The many languages spoken, the different cultures lived, the many soccer teams we root for, in good times and in bad. And I will say it once more: Ramadan Mubarak, my friends.
And I want to acknowledge that there are so many leaders in this room, a few who I have the privilege of serving in government alongside. Our City Council Member Shahana Hanif, who is here with us. Our City Council Member Yusef Salaam, who is here with us. And I must also acknowledge Sanovia Salaam, who is also here as well, the wife of Council Member Salaam. And it is a pleasure to lead an administration filled with such immensely talented New Yorkers. And a number of them are here this evening. I want to acknowledge Sarah Sayeed, our chief and executive director of New York City Civic Engagement Commission; Faiza Ali, our commissioner for the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs; [and] Aliya Latif, our executive director of the Mayor's Office of Faith-Based Partnerships. And a man lovingly known as "Money Mufti," Sherif Soliman, the director of the Mayor's Office of Management and Budget. You've heard from the Chief Counsel to the Mayor Ramzi Kassem, who is here with us. And I also want to thank Mir Bashar, who is here, our chief administrative and financial officer for the Office of Administrative Services. And Zara Rahim, who has helped to organize so much of our Ramadan. Thank you as well to Imam Khalid Latif for leading us in our Maghrib prayers. Every time I hear you, I feel a renewed sense of purpose. And I know that I am not alone in that.
I also want to thank President Stephanie Hill Wilchfort and the staff at the Museum of the City of New York for hosting us here for this beautiful occasion. Rama and I had the privilege of being here just a few weeks ago. We saw the beautiful exhibit by Joe Macken, a Queens-born truck driver who would work from 5 a.m. to 5 p.m. and then steal a few hours each night for more than 20 years to create a faithful miniature model of his muse, the City of New York. This is a city that is powered by its workers. So, most of all, I want to thank every single city worker that is here tonight. Truly. I know that as I look out across this room that it was not easy for many of you to make the time. You switched work shifts. You made childcare arrangements. You took buses and trains to break fast with your fellow public servants. And I'm grateful that you made that effort. I'm grateful for all that you do to keep our city running. You operate our subway system and answer 3-1-1 calls. You tend to our parks and pick up the garbage. You teach our children. You put out fires. You care for our sick. And you serve at every single level of City government. Thank you.
And I know it is often uncelebrated work, unrecognized. I know that it requires a lot from you. Longer commutes, even longer hours. Every day you make sacrifices. Every day you spend time away from loved ones to serve our city. And during Ramadan you do all of this with the added challenges of a stomach that aches with hunger and lips parched from thirst. And this month I've been reflecting on Verse 5 of Surah Ash-Sharh: "For indeed with hardship will be ease." It is easy to understand how such a verse applies to these days when we fast from dawn until dusk. And yet I know that for many in this museum tonight and those outside of it, there is a hardship that extends beyond this month. Simply by belonging to our faith in this city that is our home. For nearly as long as there has been a New York City, there have been Muslim New Yorkers. And yet for nearly just as long, those with power and platform have sought to dehumanize us.
Just this morning, United States Senator Tommy Tuberville from Alabama commented on a photo of me at an Iftar in City Hall this week, placed next to an image of 9/11 with the quote: "The enemy is inside the gates." A Congressman from Texas named Brandon Gill described the same Iftar as "stomach churning, truly repulsive." And today, Vicky Paladino, a City Council member from Queens - someone who works in the same building that I do, in the same building as our Council members here - reposted a tweet that also invoked 9/11, the worst terrorist attack that our city has ever faced - and included the phrase: "Yes, the terrorists won." [It] described migrants as a "biological battering ram." It is not just these words, but the actions that often accompany them. I think of the 12-year-old girl in a hijab who just last month was hospitalized after being punched in the face while waiting to be picked up from school in Bay Ridge.
I think of our very own Imam Khalid Latif, who started his first congregation in the basement of a church near NYU under the mentorship of Father John, a Catholic priest. Not only did Imam Latif receive death threats, so too did the priest that welcomed him into that space. All for daring to accept Muslim worshippers as he would accept his own. I think of how my chief counsel, Ramzi Kassem, spent his law school years going from detention center to detention center in New York and New Jersey, collecting the names of those wrongfully accused after September 11th, so that their desperate families might know where they are. I think of the video many of us saw of an NYPD officer accosted while he attempted to pray in the back room of a bodega. I think too of the smaller indignities, the indignities that many New Yorkers face, but that Muslims are expected to face in silence. Of the exhaustion of having to explain yourself to those who are not interested in understanding. Of the men who introduce themselves by their given name only to be called "Muhammad" for years on end. Of the city workers who work 12-hour shifts only to check their phone and find an elected official in that same city is called for their expulsion.
And I would like to ask each of you: who here has been told that you do not belong in New York City? Who here has heard the words, "go back to where you came from"? Who here has returned home to their city only to be ushered aside and greeted with suspicion? I have known these experiences as a young man, as a candidate for office, as the mayor of New York City. And when I hear such hatred and disdain unchecked in its rancor, I feel an isolation and a loneliness that I know that many of you have felt as well. And it feels, frankly, an ocean away from the quiet memories that I have of growing up as a Muslim in this city. The bleary-eyed Sehris with my cousin as we ate raisin bran. The Eids where my Dadi would make her biryani that I can still taste. This bigotry makes it feel as if these memories are of a different city altogether. Yet as I look around this room, I feel anything but that. Because it is together that we find ease. It is together that we do so in solidarity. And we find it in the city that is our home. I know many of you make a daily practice of seeking out solidarity. I think of the teacher and UFT leader who opens her classroom to her Muslim colleagues to pray. I think of Faiza Ali, the public servant with whom I had my first meeting at City Hall many years ago. And made a life in city government seem that little bit more possible, not just for me, but for so many other Muslim New Yorkers. I'm proud, as I said earlier, that she is now the commissioner of the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs.
When I speak to Muslims across our five boroughs, what I so often hear is the pressure to fit oneself into an ever-narrowing box. To suppress parts of oneself in the hopes of finding acceptance. Within that story is a yearning to be understood as any other New Yorker. To show that to be Muslim and to be a New Yorker is not to hold two identities in tension; it is, in fact, to be a whole person. Standing here tonight, reckoning with that presence, I think of the words that Reverend Dr. Kevin Johnson of Abyssinian Baptist Church shared with me last fall: "You are already whole. You are already enough." From Bay Ridge to Harlem, Astoria to Parkchester, you have created pockets of light that contain our wholeness. You hear the call to prayer in the warming spring air. You smell the frying oil of pakoras as sundown approaches. And you see the twinkle of Eid lights strung across intersections. The gorgeous colors of families dress their best on that most celebratory of days. It is a beautiful thing that all of you in this room and beyond it have built in these pockets of light. It is a beautiful thing your parents have built.
Those elders who started congregations that began in brownstone basements and grew into block-long Islamic centers. And it's something that I know many of you take special care to pass down to your children. And as you all do, so do I, as I stand here proud in front of you as the first Muslim mayor in our city's history. And I know that in this room there are many firsts, public servants and city workers who have led in ways both quiet and loud. And I know that for me to stand in front of you, it took years, decades, generations of work that was often unseen and unrecognized. Blazing a trail, blazing a path, knowing that it may never be enjoyed by those who blaze it, but in fact by those who come after. And I have been reminded of that legacy every day this Ramadan.
As I have traveled through this city to break fast with Muslims of every race from every part of our dear city - Muslims who eat different foods, speak different dialects, worship in different ways. And yet we are bound together by one shared faith, by one shared home: New York City. We are whole here in this city we love. And we are enough. Like many of you, Ramadan is my favorite month of the year. It has been so important to me to attend as many Jummahs, as many Iftars, as many Taraweehs as I can. Handing out dates to whomever would like them at sundown. This is a month of solidarity and giving, of hardship and ease. And it is a month that we share together. A time when our stomachs rumble in unison, when we worship side by side, when we are proud of our common faith. And as we return home to our neighborhoods this evening. As we all return to our city jobs tomorrow morning. Let us do so proud of the work that we do. Of the city that we helped to build. Of the faith that guides us in moments of joy and adversity alike. And above all, of the New Yorkers that we are. Let us bring more of ourselves out into the light. Thank you, my friends. Ramadan Mubarak.
