Twenty-five years after the shock of September 11, New York City commemorated the victims of the attacks on Friday, in the absence of US President Donald Trump, but with the presence of the city's first Muslim mayor, who has been the target of criticism from some conservative voices. The US president chose to attend other ceremonies at the Pentagon, which was also targeted that day by a plane hijacked by al-Qaeda operatives. Vice President J.D. Vance was in New York alongside the four living former US presidents: Democrats Joe Biden, Barack Obama, and Bill Clinton, and Republican George W. Bush, who was president when the attacks claimed nearly 3,000 lives. Also present was the city's first mayor to be sworn in with his hand on the Quran, Zahran Mamdani (34), a member of the left wing of the Democratic Party. Following the attacks, New York, like the rest of the United States, witnessed a sharp rise in anti-Muslim incidents. Police also intensified their surveillance of local communities under the pretext of combating Islamic extremism, through a program that was later abandoned. Political analyst Lincoln Mitchell told AFP that in 2001, "there was, of course, a Muslim community in New York, but it was smaller and had little political influence. Since then, the situation has changed dramatically, both in the city and nationally." Giuliani feels "insulted" - This development did not prevent some conservative voices from demanding that Zahran Mamdani not participate in the memorial ceremonies. Among them was Rudy Giuliani, the mayor of New York at the time of the attacks and later a lawyer for Donald Trump, who expressed feeling "insulted" by the young elected official's presence at Ground Zero (the site of the destroyed towers). A petition that garnered more than 100,000 signatures also accuses Zahran Mamdani of being associated with individuals who "show contempt for American institutions or do not adequately criticize extremist ideologies," without specifying what these ideologies are. Zahran is considered Mamdani, a member of the small Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), is a committed activist for the Palestinian cause and a vocal critic of Israel, accusing it of committing "genocide" in Gaza. This week, he announced the release of tens of thousands of documents that he claims reveal the city's cover-up of information regarding air toxicity following the attacks on the World Trade Center. In addition to the 2,977 people who died in the United States on the day of the attacks, most of them in New York, more than 9,400 others died from illnesses related to their exposure, according to data from the federal medical follow-up program. Mamdani emphasized that "people got sick because the officials they trusted lied to them when they assured them they could breathe toxic air." Among those who may be held responsible are Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg, who was elected mayor of the city in November 2001. - Fading Memory - According to the SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist websites, al-Qaeda commemorated the attacks by posting images To Osama bin Laden, who was leading the organization at the time of the attacks, and to his son Hamza. Hamza was killed in 2019 in a US operation, according to Donald Trump. Beth Hellman, president of the 9/11 Memorial Museum, points out that a quarter of a century after those events, there are now approximately 100 million Americans who were not even born, or were too young to remember them. With its focus on the "duty" of keeping the memory of these attacks alive, the institution she heads concentrates its efforts on memory transmission and educational outreach, utilizing eyewitnesses trained to speak to people who have only learned about the events through their families or school. Max Avina, a 17-year-old high school student visiting Ground Zero as part of a school program, told AFP, "You don't really grasp how real it is or what the emotions are like until you're actually there." On Friday, in a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan that was closed off for the occasion amid tight security, relatives of the victims will begin their vigil at 8:40 a.m. local time. (12:40 GMT) The long list of names of the victims will be read. As is customary each year, a bell will toll seven times to mark the key moments of the events that occurred 25 years ago. On that day in 2001, 19 al-Qaeda operatives hijacked four planes. Two planes crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, bringing down the iconic 110-story buildings. A third plane crashed into the Pentagon, while a fourth, apparently targeting the Capitol or the White House, crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after passengers resisted.
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