The mayor who took the subway to gain power. Zohran Mamdani turned his New Year’s inauguration into a break from almost everything that had happened before in New Yorkfrom the religion visible in the oath to the physical location where the transfer of command takes place.
Mamdani is the first Muslim mayor of New York and the first to govern the city as the son of South Asian immigrants and born in Africa, which is unprecedented in the history of the largest city in the United States.
He is also the first mayor of New York to take the oath of office on the Quran and not on a Bible or without any bookbreaking a symbolic tradition stemming from the position’s modern origins. At 34, he is also presented as one of the youngest mayors that the city has known for more than a century, which adds a generational break to the religious and origin change.
Two editions
During the midnight ceremony, Mamdani placed his hand on a Koran charged with intimate memory: the copy which had belonged to his grandfatherwho migrated, worked and prayed with this same book, held by his partner with another historical Quran linked to the city. This gesture connects the apex of New York municipal power to a family biography marked by displacement, diaspora and minority religiosity, making a private object a public symbol.
Along with this volume, the city loaned a Quran from the Schomburg collection, approximately two centuries old, emphasizing that the Islamic tradition also has a long and deep-rooted history that deserves a place in official rituals.
Background of the Quran
In the United States, there was already a history of important officials taking an oath on the Quran, but none at the head of a megacity like New York. Keith Ellison, the first Muslim congressman, used Thomas Jefferson’s Quran in his symbolic oath, then turned to the holy book again when he became attorney general of Minnesota; later, figures like Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib did the same by entering the House of Representatives.
In the United Kingdom and other Western countries, oaths by MPs, councilors or ministers on the Quran have been documented, but they remain exceptions to the norm of the Bible or the secular gesture of dispensing with any text.
Mamdani decided to take the oath first in a historic and closed metro station, the old town hallremnant of the city’s first underground network, today visited only on special occasions. He chose midnight on December 31 while on the surface New York celebrated the New Yearso that the event remained in an almost secret, underground space, while the party spread into the streets.
With this framing, he transforms the metro into a sort of secular temple: the place where the daily life of millions of people takes place becomes an altar of power, intersection of faith, public infrastructure and political power in the same gesture.
political liturgy
By taking the oath to the metro, Mamdani transforms the journey into a political liturgy: the scene normally associated with the rush, low wages and metallic noise are resignified as a solemn moment of inauguration. In front of the institutional staircase of the City Hall or a classical setting, he chooses a platform, rails and a ghost station, affirming that the true civic center of the city is the transport system and not the marble of the municipal palaces.
The private oath, in the presence of barely twenty people, seems intended to circulate in video and photos, so that the country can see a mayor who symbolically kneels before the metro, before the construction of power.
Progressive Zohran Mamdani becomes mayor of New York.
A few hours later, Mamdani experienced a second inauguration, more solemn and traditional: a public ceremony at 1 p.m. around the town hall, in front of a crowd frozen in the “Canyon of Heroes”. This second scene recomposes the classic liturgy – platform, musical group, speeches and live broadcast – but it no longer erases the midnight gesture, but completes it, as if there were an intimate, underground oath, then its official translation on the institutional surface.
During his inauguration speech in front of thousands of people, he promised a “new era” for the city and serve both the million people who voted for him and those who did not.
“I know that some view this administration with suspicion or disdain, or view the policy as permanently broken, and even if only action changes minds, I promise you this: if you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor,” declared the councilor after the swearing-in, in which he was guided by left-wing senator Bernie Sanders.
Overall, the day inaugurates a double record: a mayor who enters through the front door of national politics, but who insists on the fact that his story is born in the basement of the metro and in the light of a familiar Koran.
The cost of town hall
In the middle of this double ritual, there is another minimal gesture which reinforces the idea of a power anchored in everyday life: the moment when Mamdani pay exactly nine dollars to officially become mayor.
The law requires every elected official to swear an oath in writing to the city clerk and pay an administrative fee of nine dollars, an amount that translates to what it costs. three hot dogs in town, to emphasize the humility of the procedure compared to the enormity of the position.
Mamdani handed over just enough cash, signed a leather-bound book, and listened as the manager confirmed that “now it’s official,” a reminder that even New York City Hall starts with something as prosaic as paying notary fees.
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