If on September 11, 2001, someone had told us that one day New York would have a Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated mayor, that he would swear his oath on the Qur’an, that as his first act he would repeal the fight against antisemitism and appoint as his chief counsel the lawyer for al‑Qaeda terrorists (including the brother of one of the hijackers who crashed American Airlines Flight 77 into the Pentagon), who would have believed it?
It is early January, 2026, and the world, in its eternal comedy of misunderstandings, is already offering a spectacle that not even the most cynical observer could invent.
On one side, the West-the old, weary Titanic-continues to yawn in its advanced secularization, a slow and inexorable process that empties identities.
On the other, in Iran, young people-Generation Z raised under compulsory veiling and theocratic repression-take to the streets with a rage that tastes like counter‑revolution, openly defying the Islamic Republic and chanting slogans such as “Seyyed Ali will be overthrown," while burning regime flags.
And, as the cherry on top of this cake of contradictions, in New York-the beating heart of the secularized and multicultural world-Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, swears his oath on the Qur’an. A historic gesture celebrating “diversity," while thousands of kilometers away Mamdani’s Iranian peers risk their lives to free themselves from an Islamic system that imposes that very book as the law of the state.
We have chosen the comfort of relativism: live and let live. But while the West celebrated its secularism as the triumph of reason, it welcomed with fanfare the integration of religious symbols whenever they served to score points for “diversity."
Here is Mamdani: young, South Asian, Muslim, democratic socialist, swearing on a family Qur’an and on a history book borrowed from the New York Public Library. A gesture heavy with symbolism: the intersection of Islamic faith, colonial legacy, and immigrant pride. The press hails it as a milestone-the first Muslim mayor of New York, hand on the Islamic Holy Book, in a ceremony that blends sharia and progressivism.
This is triumphant multiculturalism: Islam not as a threat, but as enrichment within a secularized society.
Meanwhile, in England the state must compensate a murderous Islamist terrorist because prison isolation caused him depression.
Alaa Abd el‑Fattah has called the English “dogs and monkeys." He said he “fucking hates whites." He wrote that killing Zionists, “especially civilians," is heroic. He praised bin Laden. He dreams of our streets in flames. These were not stray comments. They were a worldview. And Britain’s cultural class did not bother to look. It did not want to look. Because the point was never him. The point was them: proving their own virtue to one another like adolescents comparing scars.
British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called Abd el‑Fattah’s return an “absolute priority." He said he was “delighted" when the man landed in Britain-as if British Jews did not exist, as if the names Westminster, London Bridge, Manchester, and Birmingham had been erased from national memory. The Home Office did not check-or did not want to. The civil service looked away. Westminster saw a cause, not a threat.
Actors and actresses such as Emma Thompson, long the moral matron of the aristocratic class, embraced el‑Fattah’s cause. Stephen Fry, who condemns intolerance at home, wants to shake hands with a man who wants the death of Zionists and whites. And then Mike Leigh, Mark Ruffalo, Emily Watson, Joseph Fiennes, and Harriet Walter.
Violence abroad is romantic in their eyes. Violence at home is a misunderstanding. And hatred is acceptable, provided it is directed at the right targets.
This asymmetry is revealing. Those who have never lived in freedom desire it with visceral passion. Those who inherited it consider it obvious, boring, perhaps even oppressive.
In Iran, in Afghanistan under the Taliban, in Pakistan when “blasphemy" laws are enforced against Christians, millions dream of the liberal anonymity of the West. They do not challenge those regimes for a “moderate Islam"; they do so for a Western future in the best sense of the term.
And how about us? We continue to fund, with our taxes and our university choices, post‑colonial studies departments that teach hatred of the West while living protected by its freedoms.
And so, while New York toasts diversity with a Qur’an on the podium, in Iran young people march against a regime that imposes that Qur’an by force.
University students, unveiled women, bazaar merchants united against Khamenei, the octogenarian Supreme Islamic Leader. Confirmed deaths, security forces firing, government buildings stormed. It is the largest wave since 2022, after Mahsa Amini, and perhaps more dangerous: the regime is weakened by sanctions, war with Israel, and the loss of allies.
Iranian youth do not want political Islam. They defy Islamic norms, burn flags, and demand freedom. And the West, in its secularized and pro‑Islamic yawn, looks on with detachment.
A few statements of support from Trump or American politicians, but nothing concrete. Better to celebrate Mamdani, symbol of a “good," integrated Islam that does not threaten the system. And so the West applauds the rise of Muslim leaders who bring the Qur’an into secular institutions (in Brussels, even into Parliament), precisely while in the Middle East Muslims (or ex‑Muslims) struggle to free themselves from the Qur’an as an instrument of power.
A West that expelled Christianity from the public sphere now admits Islam as a trophy of tolerance.
It will not end well, at least for us. Because when a civilization stops valuing and defending its own achievements, when it begins to excuse or romanticize systems that deny them, it becomes fragile. It becomes permeable. It becomes incapable of resisting those who, from within or without, want to impose a new collectivism-whether Islamist or authoritarian‑woke.
“We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism," Mamdani declared after swearing on the Qur’an.
All already seen.
Together, Iranian communists and Islamist factions managed, through mass strikes and public deception, to convince the Shah-who was unwilling to intensify repression against his own people to stay in power-to abdicate in January 1979 and go into exile. The communists did not know the tragedy they had just unleashed upon themselves.
And now Iranian youth pay with blood for the desire for freedom that we take for granted, while the West celebrates Qur’an and collectivism and ignores those who want to flee from Qur’an and collectivism.
Giulio Meotti is an Italian journalist with Il Foglio and writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is a writing fellow at the Middle East Forum (MEF) and the author, in English, of the book "A New Shoah", that researched the personal stories of Israel's terror victims, published by Encounter and of "J'Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel" published by Mantua Books, in addition to books in Italian.