From the Bronx to Brooklyn, it's more about rent than religion

New York City - In the Bronx's Morrisania neighbourhood, you often hear a familiar refrain: “Mamdani, Mamdani, Mamdani”.

Home to a fast-growing West African community - including many new-immigrant Muslims - Morrisania is among many areas where identity issues of race converge with the needs of the working class ahead of New York’s November 4 mayoral election.

Many in this community are counting on 34-year-old candidate Zohran Mamdani to win.

After all, a victory for Mamdani over former Governor Andrew Cuomo would mark a series of historic firsts for New York City - its first Muslim mayor, the first born in Africa, and the first person of South Asian descent to lead the largest city in the United States.

It is a fact that has sparked hope - and grim reminders of entrenched Islamophobia and xenophobia - across the diverse Muslim communities interwoven into the fabric of the city.

But for Aicha Donza, a shop owner in Morrisania, the Bronx, where annual incomes are half the city's average, it is the avowed Democratic Socialist's message of affordability - ambitious pledges for free buses, rent freezes on certain buildings, and universal childcare, paid for, in part, by increasing taxes on the wealthy - that has won her support.

“He says he’s going to make things easier,” Donza told Al Jazeera, showing off the wares in her store: plantain powder from Ghana; Liberian palm oil imported from the country where she was born; traditional Islamic garb imported from Turkiye, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

“The rent is so high, every day people come into the store, they say the prices are too high,” she said. “And free buses, if he can manage that, that would make a huge difference”.

Outside of the nearby Islamic Cultural Center of the Bronx, following afternoon prayers, Essa Tunkala, 60, ruminated over what the election could mean for the neighbourhood, a melting pot of both working-class trades - parking attendants, cab drivers, and store workers - and West African diaspora.

“It’s almost like you’re in West Africa,” Tunkala grinned, listing residents from Senegal, Liberia, Ghana, Togo, and Mali, to name a few.

He pointed to several serious questions that continue to hang over Mamdani’s run: How will he actualise his vision? Will he be able to rise above the relatively limited ability of the mayoral position to build the kind of coalition with state officials and lawmakers needed to realise his marquee pledges?

“But we need fresh ideas to create opportunities,” said Tunkala, who is originally from the Gambia and sells sporting goods from a table on the street. “This is a new generation with new ideas for development, that’s why I support him.”

Ahmed Jejote, a 55-year-old cab driver from Sierra Leone, echoed the sentiment.

“We’ve experienced Eric Adams,” he said, referring to the corruption-plagued current city mayor, who dropped out of the race in September. “We’ve seen Cuomo.”

“Mamdani is just starting out, and he wants to go forward,” he said. “So it’s not really about religion for me”.

Blocks away, 46-year-old Mariam Saleh stood over steaming trays of food at Kumasi Restaurant: banku, a fermented mixture of maize and cassava; suya, a spiced meat skewer; kwenkwen, a type of jollof rice.

She was less circumspect about the historic nature of Mamdani’s run.

“That he is Muslim, for us, is huge progress,” the 46-year-old, who is originally from Ghana, told Al Jazeera.

“It’s huge progress for the Muslim community in America, not just in New York.”

Surging to a surprise victory in the June primary, Mamdani represents a kaleidoscope of the diversity that defines the city of more than 8.4 million, where an estimated 800 languages are spoken. Up to one million Muslims live in New York City, estimated to be a quarter of all Muslims in the US.

Mamdani is socially progressive, with a history of grassroots activism and staunchly pro-Palestine views. While they do not define his campaign, he has embraced his ties to his birthplace, Uganda, and his identity as a Muslim son of parents of Indian Gujarati and Punjabi descent.

For Asad Dandia, an urban historian, Mamdani’s success to date is a culmination of 400 years of Muslim history in the city, stretching back to the enslaved Africans brought to New York, about 30 percent of whom were Muslim.

Muslim political power has been both inhibited and energised by waves of discrimination, including in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks and more recently, the genocide in Gaza.

Dandia was among the New Yorkers surveilled in the wake of September 11, when the New York Police Department (NYPD) and federal government reportedly spied on at least 250 mosques within a 160km (100-mile) radius of the city, as well as an unknown number of individuals. He launched a successful lawsuit in 2013 after he was targeted by a confidential informant.

Mamdani, who Dandia befriended last year, has also spoken about a classmate at his Bronx high school who was “pressured to become an informant”.

“I honestly think some of us have forgotten how truly bad it was,” Dandia reflected, adding that US President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory further charged political action.

“So the last 25 years, since 9/11, have really moulded the community into becoming this formidable force. And I think nothing demonstrates that better than this mayoral election cycle,” the 32-year-old added.

“It's crazy that the same police department that surveilled me and [Mamdani’s community] and the rest of the Muslim community is now going to be under his command.”

Dandia’s home neighbourhood in Brighton Beach, where the outer edge of Brooklyn meets the Atlantic Ocean, is a study in the fickle nature of politics for communities that feel left behind.

The area hosts a Pakistani enclave served by four mosques, as well as a quickly growing Uzbek Muslim population. On Fridays, the city sometimes closes a portion of one of the main streets to accommodate the overflow from prayer.

Voters here swung towards Trump in the 2020 presidential election, but went for the Democratic Socialist Mamdani over his opponents in June’s Democratic primary.

Erum Hanif, who heads a community centre launched after the neighbourhood was devastated by Hurricane Sandy, said the idiosyncratic shift indicates, in part, “that the current system is not working out”.

“Many working-class New Yorkers are earning on a day-to-day basis - Uber drivers, grocery store workers, healthcare workers and the working professional, and they are struggling to afford to live. That made them shift towards Mamdani,” the 42-year-old said.

At a daycare for the elderly run by Hanif’s group - APNA Brooklyn Community Center, which as an organisation does not endorse any candidate - the aunties said they were all in for Mamdani.

Amina Malik, from Lahore, Pakistan, said a top concern is the high price of rent and childcare, both issues that impact elderly residents in an outsized way.

“A lot of seniors like me are struggling to get into rent-stabilised buildings and apartments,” she said in Urdu. “Families cannot afford childcare - Mamdani is going to work on that.”

Perveen Zia, 66, who is also from Lahore, saw in Mamdani the type of representation she had not witnessed before in City Hall - someone who “understands our language and culture” and will ensure services are administered “equitably”.

“Zohran is like my son,” she said.

About 18km (12 miles) away, in the Queens neighbourhood of South Richmond Hill, the minarets of Masjid Al Abidin rise above the roti shops and garland-laden bridal stores selling saris and shalwar kameez in “Little Guyana”.

The area is a microcosm of the overlapping identities of the city’s vast patchwork of neighbourhoods, displaying Guyana’s mix of Indo-Caribbean and South Asian culture: a South American society where Christianity, Islam and Hinduism plait.

“In this neighbourhood, everyone lives like they’re cousins,” said Annie Nazir, 46, who works in childcare and moved to the US from Georgetown, Guyana five years ago.

But the masjid or mosque also underscores the challenges facing the local population. Construction on the towering structure began in 2012, but has sputtered amid various stresses, including the economic toll of the COVID pandemic. The project relies almost solely on community donations, those familiar said.

Because of that, congregants currently pray in a nearby two-storey townhouse, with the women’s section located in a similar building across the street.

“As working-class people, a lot of people think it’s time for a change,” Nazir, who attends the mosque, told Al Jazeera. She is a volunteer chapter leader for DRUM Beats, a political committee representing South Asian and Indo-Caribbean workers that is hoping to turn out the vote for Mamdani.

The upstart politician has maintained a commanding lead in the polls since the primary, but that has narrowed since current Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the race in September.

Cuomo, meanwhile, has sought to make inroads in some of the communities that buoyed Mamdani.

During a primary debate in June, the former governor struggled to name a single mosque he had visited during his 10 years in office. After losing the primary, Cuomo made his first visit of the campaign to a mosque in September, since visiting at least four in the Bronx and Queens.

At least one Muslim religious leader, Imam Qazi Qayyoom based in Jackson Heights, Queens, has endorsed Cuomo.

Mamdani jabbed Cuomo’s newfound approach during a debate on October 16.

“It took me,” he said, “to get you to even see those parts of the city.”

The line of attack has resonated with some in the Guyanese community, who noted Mamdani visited Masjid Al Abidin back in May ahead of the primary. Other ties to the community predate the election.

As an assemblyman, Mamdani advocated for Prakash Churaman, a Guyanese immigrant who has maintained he was coerced into giving a false murder confession. He joined taxi workers in a 15-day hunger strike in 2021.

Clint Ally, who spoke to Al Jazeera following evening prayers at the masjid, said he hopes Mamdani’s community-oriented style - which has included eschewing corporate donations for small donors - resonates.

“He could go down in history as the first Muslim mayor, but this is a very diverse city,” the 49-year-old said.

“We need someone who understands everybody.”

Sitting in his office on 5th Avenue in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, 71-year-old Zein Rimawi's eyes tear up as he watches a video of Palestinian prisoners being released as part of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas.

Mamdani’s outspoken support for Palestinian rights and condemnation of the genocide in Gaza has been particularly resonant in the local community, dubbed “Little Palestine”, where cafes bear names like “Al Aqsa Bakery” and “Nablus Sweets”.

Rimawi said he has known Mamdani for about eight years, stretching back to when the then-20-something worked on a campaign in support of Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian-American Lutheran pastor who launched an unsuccessful bid for New York City Council in 2017.

“I always say to young people: run for any seat. If you win, we win,” he said. “If you lose, we win.”

“Because for a Muslim to run for a seat by itself, it's not easy, but it matters,” he said. “So it’s a win-win situation.”

But Rimawi also saw Mamdani’s success - at least so far -  as the product of a widening wealth gap in the city, an issue particularly relevant in a neighbourhood like Bay Ridge, once a working-class stronghold where housing prices have skyrocketed in recent years.

“When I got married in 1988, one week’s salary would cover the average rent. Now it costs most of your salary for a month,” said Rimawi, who is originally from the occupied West Bank. “The middle class here in New York is disappearing. If it keeps going like this, soon we’ll only have two classes: The rich and the poor.”

Next door, Essa Masoud, 46, runs the Balady Market, selling products from across the Levant.

The Palestinian American, who was born and raised in Bay Ridge, was not surprised to see the Islamophobic tropes pushed by the far right in the wake of Mamdani’s June victory.

Trump has threatened to revoke Mamdani’s citizenship. Cuomo has called him a “terrorist sympathiser".

Masoud saw those attacks as a carefully calibrated “political tool”.

“It’s an effort to change the understanding of the general public, to make people fear that is not the person they should vote for,” he said.

Masoud added that as a business owner and landlord, he does carry reservations about Mamdani’s policies, including his support for rent freezes and for a $30 hourly minimum wage in the city.

He’s not opposed to Mamdani’s vision, but hopes there “will be balance” if he is elected.

Down the block, Marwa Janini, 34, heads the Arab American Association of New York, which does not endorse any candidate.

For her, the last two years have been defined by two words: pain and pride.

Pain over the atrocities in Gaza and an Islamophobic backlash fuelled in part by the Trump administration. Pride over the success of Mamdani and the message he carries.

“As Muslim New Yorkers, our identities are not fixed; they’re fluid,” she said. “But for someone who grew up in post September 11 New York, with all the fear that created, this is huge.”

“It is a big win for a visibly Muslim woman like myself,” she said, adding that her organisation had been targeted with hate messaging over the last two years, including a death threat pushed under the door.

She hoped Mamdani’s victory could help to dispel some of those prejudices, especially if he shows he will be “mayor for all New Yorkers”.

“To be in a city where we are possibly - inshallah - going to have a Muslim mayor,” she said, “it is a big deal.”