Mamdami Demands U.S. Immigration Policy Start Obeying Islam

At New York City’s Interfaith Breakfast last week, Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not merely criticize federal immigration enforcement — he reframed it as a religious and moral transgression. Invoking the Islamic doctrine of hijra, he urged New Yorkers to “stand alongside the stranger” in permanent, unqualified solidarity, elevating prophetic example above constitutional sovereignty. 

“Islam [is] a religion built upon a narrative of migration,” Mamdani declared. “The story of the Hijra reminds us that Prophet Muhammad … was a stranger too, who fled Mecca and was welcomed in Medina.” He then universalized the narrative into a binding civic command: “The obligation is upon us all … to look out for the stranger.” 

In this framework, federal enforcement is not lawful authority but cruelty. Immigration officers become “masked agents, paid by our own tax dollars,” who “violate the Constitution and visit terror upon our neighbors.”  

“If these are not attacks upon the stranger among us, what is?” Mamdani asked. “There is no reforming something so rotten and base.” 

This is an inversion of moral authority. 

Mass migration is framed as a moral and civilizational imperative, demanding compassion and openness, while serious pushback on enforcement is recast as intolerant, unjust, or even xenophobic. This framing mirrors elements of the Muslim Brotherhood’s doctrine of tamkeen (institutional entrenchment) outlined in strategic writings such as the 1991 Explanatory Memorandum and the 1982 Project, which describe a phased civilizational strategy built on population presence, parallel institutions, resistance to full assimilation, and long-term influence over policy, law, and public narrative.  

The result is a classic hypocrisy cost in the weaponization of mass migration: Constitutional states, bound by professed commitments to human rights and compassion, must either enforce borders and absorb accusations of cruelty, or abandon enforcement to preserve a humane self-image — while the advancing cause bears no reciprocal burden of allegiance, assimilation, or responsibility to the political community whose resources it claims. 

In his speech Mamdani invoked Islamic doctrine to define civic obligation and delegitimize lawful, constitutional authority, largely without media critique — even as hosts of voices on the left regularly decry any invocation of Christianity in the public square. In doing so he transformed Islamic narrative into civic mandate and federal enforcement into sacrilege, which will inevitably cause a gradual dissolution of constitutional sovereignty. 

Once enforcement is recast as violence and migration as a moral right, borders cease to function as instruments of self-government. Citizenship ceases to require allegiance. Presence detaches from sovereign consent. Loyalty gives way to dependency. The state remains, but its authority is hollowed out — enforcement rendered illegitimate not by law, but by accusation. 

This framework directly abandons the Naturalization Oath — the pledge to “absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance … to any foreign … sovereignty” and to bear “true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution. That oath presumes a vertical bond between citizen and republic. Mamdani replaces it with a horizontal obligation to the “stranger,” regardless of legality, capacity, or constitutional order. Allegiance becomes optional; empathy becomes compulsory. 

This rhetoric was not abstract. It was paired with executive action. Mamdani’s signing of Executive Order 13 reaffirmed sanctuary protections, barred ICE entry onto city property — including schools, shelters, and hospitals — without a judicial warrant, and restricted data-sharing with federal authorities except where legally compelled. He also mobilized faith institutions as citywide distribution nodes for “Know Your Rights” materials. Nearly 32,000 multilingual flyers were disseminated through faith leaders, alongside new oversight mechanisms framed as safeguards against perceived federal overreach. Enforcement was structurally obstructed. 

The result is fragmentation. Victor Davis Hanson warned that “Tribalism is one of history’s great destroyers. Once racial, religious, ethnic, or clan ties trump all considerations of merit and loyalty to the larger commonwealth, then factionalism leads to violence, violence to chaos, and chaos to the end of the state itself.” 

Mamdani’s speech illustrates that process in motion. The same pattern produced Europe’s parallel societies and no-go zones, where enforcement became politically untouchable. It is now visible in American cities, where sanctuary expansion renders borders symbolic and law selectively optional. 

This is not compassion. It is the systematic replacement of citizenship with dependency, sovereignty with moral coercion, and a nation bound by law with tribes bound by grievance — abandoning the Naturalization Oath’s demand for “true faith and allegiance” to the Constitution. 

Ammon Blair is a senior fellow at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.