Multiculturalism. Before taking the oath – to general astonishment – on a Koran during his inauguration, the leftist New York mayor Zohran Mamdani had to remove a black sheep from his municipal team, old messages where there was talk of “Money-hungry Jews” having been discovered.
It may be that many of the New Yorkers who voted for Zohran Mandani last November, propelling him to the head of the town hall of the American megalopolis, were then very far from imagining that it would be on the Koran that the new councilor would take the solemn oath of investiture. And yet this is indeed what happened. In two stages. A first time at the stroke of midnight on the night of December 31, in a small group, on the steps of a metro station disused since 1945. And a second time, in front of the town hall, with the blessing of the representative of the ultra left of the Democratic Party, Bernie Sanders, and in the presence of thousands of people.
A surprising oversight
This metro corridor is a curious choice. The elected official justified it by explaining that it evoked for him, I quote, “the importance of public transport for the vitality, health and heritage of our city.” I repeat, a very strange choice nonetheless than this ersatz catacomb, this forgotten place and desert. A platform bus would have done the job just as well, especially since the new mayor’s program would feature the promise of “free and fast buses.”
Also, according to a completely different pattern than the banal and outdated celebration of public transport, it could well be that minds as malicious as twisted end up seeing in this improbable scene an allegory of the underground journey of the ideology of which the elected Muslim could possibly be the bearer, closer to Islamism well-tempered than a good-natured Islam. But as I said, only particularly perverse and conspiratorial minds would venture into this area.
Also read: Madame Mamdani, a great artist we tell you!
However, the taking of the oath on the Koran is not an anecdote. Once again, I’m not at all convinced that many New Yorkers saw this coming. And I ask myself a question. How could it be possible that they, the inhabitants of this city, had forgotten that it was also on the Koran that the terrorists of the Twin Towers and their approximately three thousand dead had sworn to see their barbaric team to the end?
Old posts
By what dark miracle could such an oversight have occurred? How were the populations of this city able to put at the head of their institutions a character who – whatever his personal skills and qualities – never truly condemned this other barbaric team, that of Hamas, on October 7, in Israel, carefully avoiding qualifying it as a terrorist act. And who, moreover, has never ceased to take up the accusation of genocide (he uses the word) committed by Israel, accusing it of deliberately bombing – I quote again – homes, hospitals, schools under the rubble.” And then there is, for good measure, the discovery in recent days of anti-Semitic messages posted on Twitter between 2011 and 2014 by Catherine Almonte Da Costa, the same person who had just been appointed head of recruitment for the city. Faced with almost general disapproval, the new mayor had no other choice than to resign his colleague, making a solemn declaration in the process in which he was to affirm that “these comments (those of the messages in question) were unacceptable and that they are absolutely not representative of himself nor the values of his administration. » Including act. We breathe. However, it remains to be seen what the recruitment would have been like, on what criteria it would have been carried out, if it should have actually been entrusted to a person convicted of anti-Semitism, and therefore of racism. We also have to hope that other bad surprises like these, other little nasty things of the same kind, are not hidden, more or less in number, under the (now red) carpets of the new municipality.
We are told that 30% of members of the city’s Jewish community voted in favor of Zohran Mandani. This, I will admit, leaves me speechless. I don’t understand. No, I don’t understand. What interpretation can I give of this state of affairs whose rational dimension – if there is one – totally escapes me?
One comes to me, which, I confess, seizes me with fear. Wouldn’t a city, a human community, which were to exceed a certain threshold on the slope of decadence, inevitably enter the path of self-destruction, suicide to put it bluntly? We would almost be asking ourselves the question for good. Terrible question…
Finally, we must admit that this oath on the Koran from the chief magistrate of one of the most important metropolises of our West is a first which does not fail to generate its weight of concern. Let’s wait for the rest. Without panic but with vigilance. For now, let’s try to ensure that this first is also the last.
