New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani in his Arsenal themed kurta for an Eid celebration.
Image: AFP
Ashley Fetters Maloy
Last week, New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani attended an Eid al-Adha celebration in the Bronx wearing a dark-blue kurta with red stripes - modeled after the away jerseys for the London pro soccer team Arsenal FC. Promptly, the right-wing X account End Wokeness posted a photo of Mamdani kneeling in prayer alongside other men wearing kurtas, thobes, kameezes and kufis: “Imagine telling a NYer in 2001 … this is an image of their future mayor,” the post read.
Some responses delivered precisely the hateful rhetoric the post seemed to call for. Others met the moment with wit and recognition instead.
“If i lived in nyc i’d be livid. i simply can’t accept a gooner for a mayor,” one user deadpanned, using a well-known slang term for Arsenal fans, a play on the team’s “Gunners” nickname.
“Praying for that win,” wrote another, accompanied by a laughing emoticon. (Arsenal will play for the Champions League title on Saturday.)
“Fear this is the moment I fully lost influence on what sons should wear for Eid,” joked podcast host Mishal Husain, with a grimacing emoji.
Listen - I am not here, nor am I qualified, to make a judgment on whether a soccer-jersey kurta is an appropriate or formal enough garment for a Muslim holiday celebration. (Though I’ll note that in the evangelical churches I grew up attending, in Scottsdale, Arizona, and the suburbs of Minneapolis, you can bet Diamondbacks and Vikings merch regularly showed up in the congregation on Sundays.)
But I will argue it was a clever wardrobe choice for the first Muslim to ever hold the office of mayor of New York City, a 34-year-old politician with the eyes of the whole nation scrutinizing his every move. It was all but inevitable, unfortunately, that photographs of Mamdani celebrating Eid would be weaponized to negatively emphasize his Muslim faith. Injecting sports fandom into these images - a unifier across religions, political parties, nations and generations - at least adds an element of the universal and relatable.
The mayor’s press office did not immediately respond to a request for comment on where the mayor got his kurta or why he decided to wear it Wednesday, though one can almost certainly guess that it’s related to Mamdani’s long-standing Arsenal fandom and the fact that the franchise won its first Premier League title since 2004 on Sunday. Mamdani celebrated at a bar in Brooklyn’s Fort Greene neighborhood alongside Spike Lee and Jason Sudeikis.
Mamdani has worn Arsenal jerseys on several occasions, both as a candidate and during his tenure as mayor. In general, wearing soccer jerseys underlines the mayor’s youth and globally minded progressivism; soccer’s growth in the United States has been driven by a fan base that’s both younger and more diverse than that of other U.S. pro sports.
But the choice of an Arsenal kurta on a day when Muslims were especially visible in the city served two distinct functions. The shape of the garment plainly and proudly identified Mamdani as a Muslim, a member of a religion that just 1 percent of the U.S. population practices. The big white logo on the chest, meanwhile, identified him just as plainly and proudly as a sports fan - which, by contrast, nearly 40 percent of Americans are.
The visual served as a reminder, to anyone who was mistaken, that Muslims have mainstream American interests and are part of mainstream America, and it deescalated a situation ripe for bigotry by inviting lighthearted fan-on-fan roasting instead.
The only more apt choice, I would posit, might have been a blue-and-orange kurta, to celebrate the NBA’s Eastern Conference champion New York Knicks.