NEW YORK — Othman Alahlemi and 200 other men had crammed into the decades-old Bronx Muslim Center for afternoon prayers, tripping over each other as they tried to leave down a narrow set of stairs in the two-story building.

But as he stepped outside, he could see a new, 32,000-square-foot mosque rising above a community of Yemeni food markets, gift shops and clothing stores. The new Bronx Muslim Center, scheduled to open in late 2026 in the recently named “Little Yemen” neighborhood, will become the largest mosque in New York state — at least until several other Muslim communities in the city complete their own expansion projects.

In a city famous for its ethnic diversity, where power has been held by successive waves of Dutch, Irish, Italian, Jewish and Black residents, Muslims are now rising to prominence and becoming a distinct political force. In November, they formed the backbone of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral election victory, ushering in a new era for New York and the city’s changing demographics.

The 34-year-old assemblyman took office Thursday as the city’s first Muslim and South Asian mayor, bringing hope to Muslim residents who for decades have felt they were merely on the edges of municipal power.

“We feel reflected in him,” Hafeez Raza, a 64-year-old seamstress in Brooklyn, said about Mamdani. “For the first time in a long time, people here feel the power to speak.”

New York’s Muslim community includes surging populations of South Asians, Indo-Caribbeans, Arabs and Africans as well as a historical population of African American Muslims. They have transformed neighborhoods from the Bronx to Brooklyn to Queens, revitalizing commercial districts and building schools and houses of worship while navigating immigration crackdowns and Islamophobic attacks.

Interviews with more than two dozen Muslim residents and leaders across the city reveal a population buoyed by its rising clout in city politics but with occasional doubts about Mamdani and his democratic socialist policies. Some Muslims maintain they are much more conservative on issues such as policing, education and business regulation than Mamdani is.

Still, the Muslim community, which 25 years ago endured harassment and government surveillance after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, is finding New York more of a safe haven as the Mamdani era begins, residents and community leaders said. They expect the new mayor to become a vocal advocate for their communities and a foil for conservative politicians, including those in places such as Washington, D.C., Florida and Texas, who continue to vilify them and their institutions.

“I think what this election represented is an awakening of the Muslim community to say, ‘Enough of being on the receiving end of inequality,’” said Afaf Nasher, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), New York. “If we want a better New York for us, our neighbors and the city beyond, then we need to be part of the process.”

After a nasty campaign that included attacks against him that some considered to be Islamophobic, Mamdani seems to be savoring his role as a barrier-breaking New York politician. During his victory speech, he made it clear that his Muslim identity will remain a central tenet of his values and principles.

“I am young, despite my best efforts to grow older. I am Muslim. I am a democratic socialist,” Mamdani said. “And most damning of all, I refuse to apologize for any of this.”

A growing population

With religious identity not counted by the U.S. Census Bureau, estimates of the number of Muslims in New York vary.

CAIR estimates there are 1 million Muslims in the city, nearly 1 in 8 residents, or about 12 percent. That would be a quarter-million more people than the group counted a decade ago, Nasher said. Mamdani also claims that a million Muslims reside in the city.

Other estimates suggest a smaller population.

The Public Religion Research Institute, a Washington-based think tank, estimates that Muslims account for less than 1 percent of the population in Manhattan and from 1 percent to 6 percent in Staten Island, Brooklyn, the Bronx and Queens. The organization found that Muslims outnumbered Jewish residents in two boroughs, Queens and the Bronx.

Data from the November election shows the community held growing influence.

A group that organizes South Asian and Indo-Caribbean New Yorkers, Desis Rising Up and Moving (DRUM), has built a database of voters it believes to be Muslim. The database identified 307,000 registered voters who were Muslim, up from 245,000 registered voters in the 2021 mayoral elections. (“Desi” is a slang term for people from the Indian subcontinent.)

Fahd Ahmed, DRUM’s executive director, said an after-election analysis of voting records show that Muslims make up about 7 percent of registered voters but accounted for 14 percent of the votes cast in 2025. Network exit polling found Muslims made up just 4 percent of the electorate, but 10 percent of voters also responded “other” when asked if they had a major religion or no religion at all.

There are now large concentrations of Muslims in neighborhoods in the Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn. Even Staten Island, a historical anchor of New York’s working-class White and conservative population, has seen a significant increase in its Muslim population, said Abdullah Akl, the political director for the Muslim American Society of New York, which is working to quadruple the size of a mosque it manages there.

In eastern Queens, the Jamaica neighborhood has become a center of New York’s expanding Bangladeshi community. Between 2000 and 2020, the Bangladeshi community in New York grew fivefold, according to census data. About 90 percent of Bangladeshi immigrants are Muslim, according to community leaders.

Besides sharing the same faith, Ahmed said, New York’s Muslim voters were drawn to Mamdani because of his pledge to make New York City more affordable, including freezing rent in rent-stabilized apartments, a promise of free buses and universal child care. Mamdani’s strong stance against Israel’s war in Gaza and his vows to protect undocumented immigrants from ICE raids also likely galvanized Muslim voters, Ahmed said.

“His campaign was focused on people’s material needs,” Ahmed said. “Housing, child care and transit resonated with people immediately because it was speaking to people’s need of: ‘How does this make my life better?”

Waves of new voters

At Darul Uloom New York, several hundred people gathered for prayers on a recent Friday, the holiest day of the week for Muslims. Darul Uloom serves as both a mosque and a religious school for 500 children, billing itself as the largest madrassa for Bangladeshi children outside Bangladesh.

After he finished his prayers, M. Anwar Khandker recalled how there used to be “only one mosque in Queens” when he moved to New York in 1985. Today, Khandker said, there are dozens.

“Every day, someone lands at JFK airport from the Bangladeshi community,” he said. “More than 50 percent stay.”

Khandker, a chemist who helped establish Darul Uloom, said its worshipers rallied behind Mamdani because they saw links between his values and the teachings of their faith.

“He used the word ‘socialist’ and that meant five fundamental things — the right to food, clothing, education, health and shelter,” said Khandker, who was especially drawn to Mamdani’s pledge of universal child care. “It’s economic sense, because Islam says the same thing.”

Southern Brooklyn’s Sunset Park neighborhood also has a robust Muslim population as residents spill over from Bay Ridge, where thousands of Arab residents live.

The neighborhood is home to the Muslim Community Center in Brooklyn, where on a recent day Abdel Tazghina huddled alone in the second-story prayer room next to a space heater as he waited for afternoon prayers to begin. He enjoyed the quiet, Tazghina said, because on some days the place is so crowded that some must pray in an area that also serves as a funeral home.

Tazghina, 71, immigrated from Morocco in 1988 to work as a construction worker and received his U.S. citizenship in 2022. He cast his first vote for Donald Trump in 2024, believing President Joe Biden’s administration had allowed in too many undocumented immigrants. His second vote was for Mamdani.

“We want him to do his job correctly as the rent is very expensive, the bills are very expensive and food is very expensive,” Tazghina said. “You used to be able to go [to the grocery store] with $50, you got your whole basket full. Now with $50, you get nothing, and if he can fix that, it will be good.”

In Brooklyn’s Midwood neighborhood, the growth of the Pakistani population has carved out an area now known as “Little Pakistan” on Coney Island Avenue. Since it became the epicenter for the New York Police Department’s controversial surveillance of Muslims after the Sept. 11 attacks, the community had a reputation for being insular and rejecting domestic politics.

But between Mamdani’s primary victory and the general election, 1,643 residents in the area registered to vote, according to data provided by DRUM. In precincts where large concentrations of Pakistani Americans reside, about 70 percent of residents supported Mamdani, according to election results.

Even today, two months after the election, posters and flags supporting Mamdani hang in front of many businesses on Coney Island Avenue. The scene is reminiscent of the visible signs of support for Trump in small Rust Belt cities that lingered in front yards and flag poles long after ballots had been counted.

Most Muslims said they do not expect Mamdani to do anything specifically for their community besides representing them and standing up for them should they feel threatened.

“All I want from him is for him to support the Muslim community,” said Danish Ishaq, 31, a Pakistani American. “I just hope he doesn’t hide it.”

But Nasher, executive director of CAIR’s New York chapter, said the community does have specific policy changes that it hopes Mamdani will implement.

Nasher said CAIR will press the incoming mayor to clarify that Muslims in New York City public schools have a “religious accommodation” that entitles them to pray in school. She also expects Mamdani to establish new ground rules for the New York Police Department Strategic Response Group, which she has accused of heavy-handed treatment of Muslims protesting the war in Gaza.

Mamdani will also be called upon to hire Muslims at all levels of city government, Nasher said.

Akl added that the Muslim leaders also will be “holding Mamdani accountable” for promises he made about weakening ties between city government and Israel.

That sentiment concerns Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch, senior rabbi of Stephen Wise Free Synagogue in Manhattan’s Upper West Side. Hirsch, also the president of the New York Board of Rabbis, stressed he and his congregants would never “judge people by their religion, where they were born, or the color of their skin.”

Hirsch said he is alarmed by growing anti-Zionism in New York and around the nation. He worries that Mamdani shares those beliefs. Mamdani has demurred when asked if he supports Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state. Mamdani has disavowed antisemitism, and one of his newly hired aides resigned in December after one day on the job, when years-old social media posts she wrote came to light. The posts echoed anti-Jewish tropes.

“I hope he understands, both in terms of his rhetoric and policy initiatives, that there is a direct connection between an ideological rejection of Israel’s right to exist and growing hostility to Jews in New York,” Hirsch said of Mamdani. “And it’s an issue for all New Yorkers because, if hostility to Jews grows, then the city itself will become more intolerant, more violent, more nasty and less of the beautiful city that all of us love.”

Giving Mamdani a chance

In Little Yemen, in the Bronx’s Morris Park neighborhood, residents and local leaders say their biggest hope for Mamdani is that he strengthens the community.

The Bronx Muslim Center opened in 1998, sparking the development of a new community identity. Within a year, halal grocery stores and restaurants started opening nearby, said Yahay Obeid, outreach director for the mosque.

In the aftermath of the 2008 housing crisis, Yemenis and other Arab residents flocked to the neighborhood to buy up distressed properties. The influx accelerated when civil war broke out in Yemen in 2011. Today, Obeid estimates that 15,000 Yemenis live in Morris Park.

With the current Bronx Muslim Center having a capacity of just 200 people, Friday prayers — which can attract 2,500 — have been shifted to a nearby wedding hall until the new mosque is completed. And residents have symbolically renamed White Plains Road, which slices through the neighborhood, after a former president of Yemen, Ibrahim al-Hamdi.

Obeid, who voted for Mamdani, cautions that Yemenis have some concerns about him. He said the community supports “more police”; Mamdani has pledged to hold New York Police Department staffing at current levels. The community generally opposes additional government regulation and “is more on the conservative side” regarding what is taught in schools, he said.

“But we now have a Muslim running the largest city in America,” Obeid said. “So, we are going to give him a chance.”

The influx of Yemeni residents and business owners has been a boon for the local economy, said Camelia Tepelus, executive director of the Morris Park Business Improvement District. She said her commercial district, which covers 21 blocks and 315 businesses, now has a lower vacancy rate than even some of the wealthiest shopping areas in Manhattan.

“When I started in this job seven years ago, there were some Middle Eastern businesses on two blocks,” said Tepelus. “But now basically half of the corridor, and 80 percent of new businesses opened, are Middle Eastern or North African-owned.”

The shifting demographics at times have led to some tensions. Last January someone defaced a menorah and Christmas banner that the district traditionally puts up over the holidays.

Some longtime residents were also outraged when youths clashed with police on a Morris Park street in 2023. A video of the incident shows someone yelling “this is Arab land” at police.

“The more established Yemeni organizations said this was just kids and teens,” Tepelus said. “But at the end of the day, for someone to say, ‘this is Arab land’, on Morris Park Avenue, which for 100 years was Italian, was pretty shocking.”

Mark Watson’s house, lit up in Christmas lights, sits around the corner from where the new Bronx Muslim Center is being built. Watson, who is Black, said the newer residents have driven up the value of the house his late mother bought 30 years ago for $185,000.

“It’s now worth $1.1 million, so everything is working out,” Watson, 31, said. “This now feels like a real community. … Everyone even addresses you as ‘brother’.”

That sense of community will only sharpen in coming months, Obeid said. The recently established Little Yemen Neighborhood Council will hold its first meeting in January. Obeid said the group hopes Mamdani will be the guest speaker.

Polling director Scott Clement contributed to this report.