What Does Choosing a Muslim Leader Truly Mean? Anxieties and Warnings from London to New York

 

On the streets of London, Sadiq Khan has served three consecutive terms as mayor. This politician of Muslim background has won broad support through his pragmatic urban governance—from optimizing public transportation networks to promoting green energy transitions—making this millennial ancient capital appear more inclusive and vibrant. However, when our gaze shifts across the Atlantic to New York, a similar wave is surging. In the 2025 New York City mayoral election, Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani holds a double-digit lead, early voting is about to begin, and his Muslim identity has become a focal point of debate.

 

Mamdani is the undisputed leader of America's "extinction movement": racially, he broadly falls into the white category, yet originates from Africa, is Muslim, and even carries Indian ancestry. Almost all "barbarians" and white leftists are willing to support him. The election of this culturally and ethnically mixed individual as mayor of America's largest city will serve as a stark symbol of the global "barbarian" siege against the United States and the West. This narrative, while carrying strong warning undertones, also reflects the sharpness of contemporary cultural conflicts: it casts Mamdani as a "hybrid threat," blending post-colonial legacies with the complex tensions of identity politics, much like the Western fear of "Oriental" hybrid images dissected by historian Edward Said in *Orientalism*.

 

As a young democratic socialist, Mamdani promises to lower living costs and strengthen social welfare systems, offering tangible hope to many New Yorkers. But amid the clamor of the campaign, some voices attempt to equate him with distant Middle Eastern extremism, thereby stirring voters' fear and resentment—imagining a blurred line between ordinary Muslim neighbors and terrorists. This strategy may seem to strike at the heart, but it often backfires. It overlooks a deeper reality: most New Yorkers—those immigrant descendants or native residents raised in a multicultural melting pot—have long learned to distinguish faith from fanaticism, viewing Mamdani as a native progressive force rather than an external threat. Such attempts at linkage not only underestimate Americans' resilience toward religious diversity but also expose thornier issues: What does accepting Muslim leadership truly entail?

 

The Yacoubian Building: A Mirror and Hidden Pain of Middle Eastern Oil States

 

In the pen of Egyptian writer Alaa Al Aswany, The Yacoubian Building serves as a mottled mirror, reflecting the deep fissures in Middle Eastern society. This novel, published in 2002, unfolds on the stage of a dilapidated apartment building from the colonial era in downtown Cairo, intertwining the fates of over a dozen residents: from the aging French collaborator Zoghloul Sabri, to the ambitious young journalist Hatim; from the corrupt parliamentarian Zaki Bey el-Mehelmi, to the repressed homosexual Hatim. The joys and sorrows of these characters not only sketch a microcosm of Egypt's Mubarak era (1981-2011) but also function as an allegory, revealing the structural dilemmas faced by Middle Eastern oil states—those like Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar that have built high walls with black gold. The crumbling building in the novel symbolizes the collapse of past glories and the hollow prosperity of modernization, just as the corruption, social stratification, and political repression beneath oil wealth cannot be concealed.

 

From the outset of the novel, the building is shaped into a microcosm of Egyptian society: the lower floors are slum-like and cramped, while the upper levels are secret paradises for the elite. Zoghloul, the "soul" of the building and once a hero of the independence movement, witnesses in his old age how the apartment is devoured by deals of power and money—politicians, through bribery, convert public spaces into illegal balconies, symbolizing the private plunder of national resources. Al Aswany depicts this corruption with sharp strokes, portraying it not as an isolated incident but as a systemic cancer: Parliamentarian Zaki Bey el-Mehelmi leverages oil subsidies and military connections to effortlessly seize engineering contracts, turning a blind eye to the underclass. Turning to the Middle Eastern oil states, this mirror fits all too well. Saudi Arabia, the world's largest oil exporter, has its royal family controlling tens of billions of dollars in oil rents, yet concentrates wealth among a few families and tribes through "crony capitalism." A 2023 Transparency International report shows Saudi Arabia's Corruption Perceptions Index at just 52 (out of 100), far below the global average, with massive anti-corruption campaigns often seen as tools for Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman to eliminate rivals rather than genuine reforms. In the novel, Taha's idealism shatters in the swamp of corruption, much like Saudi Arabia's younger generation: despite the "Vision 2030" promises of diversification, they face unemployment rates as high as 12%, and oil price fluctuations (such as the 2020 crash) could tear open the veil of welfare at any moment. A deeper concern lies in social inequality and moral decay, which are epitomized in the oil states' "authoritarian welfare" model.

 

The Yacoubian Building exposes the class chasm through the plight of the maid Busayna: she serves the elite yet endures sexual harassment and exploitation, ultimately resorting to a desperate compromise by marrying the elderly Zaki Bey el-Mehelmi. Hatim's homosexual identity festers under the dual shackles of religious conservatism and social exclusion, reflecting Egypt's moral hypocrisy. Oil states, though providing generous subsidies via petroleum revenues—Qatar's citizens enjoy a per capita GDP exceeding $80,000, with nearly 100% coverage of free healthcare and education—create even more insidious layers of stratification. In the UAE and Qatar, over 90% of the population consists of foreign laborers from South Asia and Africa, who flood in to build skyscrapers yet suffer under the "kafala" sponsorship system: passports confiscated, wages withheld, dormitories like slums. During the 2022 Qatar World Cup, Human Rights Watch exposed the tragedy of thousands of laborer deaths—this isn't precisely an amplified version of the novel's underclass characters? Oil wealth, meant to nourish all, instead benefits only the elite like the building's illegal balconies, breeding a moral vacuum: Saudi Arabia's "Wahhabi" religious police have waned since Mohammed's reforms, but women's rights (such as the guardianship system) remain restricted, and LGBTQ+ individuals face death penalty threats. Through these characters' downfalls, Al Aswany warns: when material abundance masks the absence of rights, society will rot like the building, collapsing from within.

 

Political repression and lack of long-term sustainability serve as another prophecy in the novel about the oil states' woes. Taha joins an Islamist militant group and is ultimately killed during a terrorist attack mission, symbolizing the authoritarian regime's strangling of dissent. Egypt's Mubarak era maintained unity through emergency laws, with intelligence agencies infiltrating daily life—this mirrors the Gulf monarchies' playbook. The UAE, though ostensibly modern, hides the absence of free speech behind Dubai's neon lights: in 2024, Human Rights Watch documented dozens of blogger arrests solely for criticizing the royals or labor policies. Qatar projects soft power through funding media (like Al Jazeera) yet suppresses opposition at home via "national security laws." The unsustainability of oil economies is the Achilles' heel of these states. Just as the building's colonial remnants in the novel cannot adapt to modern needs, oil dependency renders Gulf economies perilously fragile: the International Energy Agency predicts a 30% decline in global oil demand post-peak by 2050, and while Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" invests in tourism and technology, it still pins 75% of its fiscal revenue on oil and gas. During the 2014-2016 oil price plunge, Saudi deficits soared to 15% of GDP, forcing subsidy cuts and sparking social discontent—this isn't the echo of the Arab Spring? At the novel's end, though the building is repaired, its cracks remain hidden, implying that without root-and-branch reform of authoritarian structures in the Middle East, the oil "golden age" will dissolve into illusion. The Yacoubian Building is no elegy exclusive to Egypt but a cautionary tale for Middle Eastern oil states. It reminds us that oil is no panacea: it can erect welfare ramparts but cannot build the foundation of justice. Al Aswany's narrative, like a scalpel, slices through facades to reveal cycles of corruption, societal alienation, and power abuse. These issues lurk in the glittering metropolises of Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, awaiting an awakening as authentic as the novel's. Only by dismantling the building's illegal balconies and reconstructing an inclusive order can the Middle East break free from oil's shackles and usher in a sustainable dawn.

What Does Choosing a Muslim Leader Truly Mean?

 

Essentially, selecting a Muslim mayor is not merely an act of identity recognition but a tacit endorsement of the developmental model of Middle Eastern Muslim states over the past few decades. These nations, once hailed as beacons of Islamic revival, have instead mired themselves in political and economic quagmires, far from exemplars of success. Take Saudi Arabia as an example: this Gulf powerhouse outwardly builds a fortress-like welfare system on oil wealth, with citizens enjoying free education, healthcare, and housing subsidies, and a per capita GDP exceeding $30,000. But the price of this prosperity is harsh authoritarian rule, with the royal family maintaining order through religious police and intelligence networks—any dissent, even women's driving or social media criticism, can invite lashes or imprisonment. A similar scenario replays in Iran: the 1979 Islamic Revolution toppled a secular dynasty, promising justice and prosperity, yet devolved into a theocratic oligarchy. Economically, sanctions and corruption intertwine, driving inflation above 40% and youth unemployment over 25%; politically, the iron fist of moral police and mass crackdowns (like the 2022 Mahsa Amini protests) sustain superficial stability, propped up by indoctrination and media censorship. These nations lack long-term viability because they rely on repression rather than consensus: once oil prices fluctuate or external pressures intensify, fissures rapidly widen. Egypt's case is even more ironic—the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi briefly took power, only for the military to stage a coup in the name of "stability," reverting to Sisi's iron-fisted rule, stalling economic reforms, and leaving poverty rates hovering around 30%.

 

Of course, some argue that even setting aside political rights, economic welfare can secure public compliance. This seems to hold in the Gulf states: the UAE and Qatar irrigate skyscrapers and luxurious lifestyles with oil rents, leading many citizens to willingly trade silence. Qatar's per capita income surpasses $60,000, its infrastructure rivals Europe's, and hosting the World Cup briefly dazzled the global stage. But the halo of this "authoritarian welfare state" is ultimately ephemeral. Oil economies are inherently unsustainable: global energy transitions accelerate, with electric vehicle adoption and renewable investments (like the EU's Green Deal) eroding fossil fuel demand. In 2024, oil prices dipped below $70 per barrel at times, ballooning Gulf budget deficits, and while Saudi Arabia's "Vision 2030" pledges diversification, it still relies on oil for 80% of fiscal revenue. Moreover, this model cannot be transplanted to Europe or America. New York's diverse economy depends on innovation, technology, and services, not single resources; London's financial hub demands transparent rule of law, not royal largesse. Imposing Middle Eastern oil rentierism on Western cities would spell disaster: imagine subsidized housing tied to oil price swings, infrastructure investments beholden to geopolitical conflicts—how could that sustain millions of immigrants' livelihoods?

 

A deeper worry is that such acquiescence could erode the West's core values. Mamdani's campaign, though focused on local issues like affordable housing and police reform, has sparked controversy over his support for Palestine, with critics fearing it imports Middle Eastern geopolitical tensions into city hall. In Pakistan, this model has bred cyclical instability: alternating grips by the military and Islamist parties, economic dependence on IMF bailouts, political saturation with religious extremism, and 2024 election rigging allegations pushing the nation to the brink of collapse. These cases remind us that problems in Muslim states stem not from faith itself but from institutional design: lacking independent judiciary, multi-party competition, and citizen oversight leads to corruption spreading like a virus. Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index shows most Muslim-majority countries at the bottom, with Egypt and Libya scoring under 30 (out of 100). In contrast, Indonesia, the world's most populous Muslim democracy, has achieved relative stability through elections and media freedom despite challenges, with GDP growth steadily above 5%. This proves Islam and democracy are not incompatible; the issue lies in authoritarian legacies.

When New York voters head to the polls on November 4, they face not just candidates' promises but a choice of future mirrors. Supporting Mamdani may be a triumph of diversity; but ignoring the warnings of the Middle Eastern model—repressive stability, economic fragility, rights deficits—could render that victory a fleeting illusion. Western cities like New York and London need not oil-fueled fantasies but sustainable governance: blending cultural diversity with institutional resilience to avoid repeating those Middle Eastern pitfalls. After all, truth often hides in the echoes of history, not the clamor of fear.

 

The Roots of the Problem and the Dilemma

 

The anxiety over accepting Muslim leadership essentially stems from blind spots in Western nations' own policies. After World War II, they never defined Muslim states wholesale as despotic dictatorships, targeting only those regimes explicitly opposing the West—like Libya's Gaddafi government, Iraq's Saddam regime, and Afghanistan's Taliban—with hardline stances. The West needs oil supplies from Middle Eastern petroleum states and relies on their cooperation in international affairs (such as anti-terror coalitions or energy stability), while these countries' internal repressive authoritarianism poses no direct threat to Western core interests. This is the essence of the West's deliberate "feigned deafness": geopolitical calculations take precedence over human rights principles, as in the Cold War era when the U.S. backed the Saudi royals to counter Soviet influence. However, this selective blindness has now produced side effects: many ignorant leftists truly believe Islam surpasses Christianity, and Muslim states outshine Western democracies—citing evidence of Middle Eastern oil nations "dripping with wealth," with generous welfare for ordinary folk, thus urging the West to convert to Islam and learn from Muslims. This view overlooks the underbelly issues beneath Muslim states' surface prosperity and fails to provide a reasonable historical and sociological explanation at the civilizational level for the Muslim expansions over the past two millennia.

 

From a critical historical and sociological perspective, Muslim expansion is not merely "faith dissemination" or "cultural fusion" but a systematic imperialist mode, blending religious mobilization, military conquest, and economic plunder. In the early 7th century, after Prophet Muhammad unified the Arabian Peninsula, the Caliphate rapidly expanded into Persia, North Africa, and the Iberian Peninsula, annexing the fringes of the Byzantine and Sassanid Empires through the incentives of "jihad" doctrine and the mobility of tribal alliances. Sociologically, this expansion resembles the Roman Empire's "civilizing mission" but cloaks itself in theocratic legitimacy, masking forced conversions of non-believers and tax exploitation (such as the jizya). The medieval Ottoman Empire perpetuated this pattern: through the "devshirme" system, it conscripted Christian boys into elite Janissary corps while imposing Islamization in the Balkans and Central Europe, permanently altering local demographics—the century-old grudges between Serbia and Greece stem from this. The 19th-century Wahhabi movement propelled expansion into modern extremism: Saudi founder Ibn Saud allied with religious zealots to conquer the Arabian Peninsula, laying the groundwork for the oil kingdom, yet at the cost of tribal purges and women's enslavement. Sociologist Bernard Lewis argues in *The Middle East* that this expansion's "civilizational logic" is not organic evolution but a defensive response to external threats: from Mongol invasions to European colonialism, it fostered a "siege mentality," paralleling internal repression with external holy wars, leading to innovation stagnation and dependency (such as the Ottoman Empire's late pleas for European technology). The two-millennia cycle—conquest, prosperity, decay, implosion—lacks sustainable institutional innovation, as seen in the Abbasid Caliphate's swift decline after its golden age, proving the model's inherent fragility: it relies on conquest dividends, not indigenous productivity. In contrast, the West achieved secular transformation through the Enlightenment, avoiding this "theocratic trap."

 

All authoritarian states—whether Muslim autocracies or Eastern grand unified centralist regimes—are essentially indistinguishable, with similar problems: corruption among officials and elites, systemic exploitation of the underclass, expansionism in international relations, and profound dependence on Western technology, innovation, and wealth. Whether Muslim oil monarchies or Chinese-style centralism, they all face vulnerabilities in governance and economic models. This fragility and dependency ensure such models cannot be universally promoted worldwide. Take the Soviet Union as an example: its centralism briefly industrialized, yet collapsed due to corruption (like Brezhnev-era cronyism) and expansion (such as the Afghan War); similarly, Iran's "Islamic Republic" relies on oil exports but saw inflation hit 50% in the 2023 economic crisis, forcing the populace into shadow economies. Historical evidence shows this model is even more prone to collapse in the globalization era: lacking citizen oversight leads to frequent policy blunders, as in the 2020 Saudi oil facility attacks exposing energy security flaws.

 

When a historian witnesses Mamdani's election as New York mayor, he envisions a barbarian chieftain becoming the Roman Caesar's Praetorian prefect—a cultural subversion of empire's twilight, much like Gibbon's description in *The History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire* of the Vandals' fusion with the Roman Guard, ultimately hastening the Western Roman Empire's fall. But modern New Yorkers are not easily swayed by such literary analogies; the limitations of human knowledge stem from our brief lifespans: people cannot foresee societal landscapes a century hence, and such foresight holds little practical value. Therefore, they prefer the technical, immediate analyses of economists and scientists.

 

The challenge falls to those New Yorkers and Americans who still cling to rationality: Will you choose the long-term development of your descendants and human civilization, or the immediate personal gains? History's wheel shows no mercy to the shortsighted, just as Rome's Caesars lost their way amid barbarian tides, and today's New York may stand at a similar crossroads.