Faith, Fear, and the Mayor of New York

shared a meme of the Twin Towers asking, “Has New York forgotten?” Mike Smithgall digs into what that reaction says about us.

 He opens with a story that sounds like 9/11—but isn’t—and exposes the double standard in how we label religious violence. From the Oklahoma City bombing to modern Islamophobia, this Mike Drop looks at how fear and familiarity shape our bias.

 Mike explains why, as an atheist, he’s not on either side of the Muslim–Christian divide, why both faiths harbor good people and dangerous extremists, and why only secular government protects everyone.

 His closing line says it all: “Terror has no religion. Fear only thinks it does. And when fear decides who we should hate, truth and reason don’t stand a chance.”

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

I had just turned 25 a few days earlier. I had started a new job that month, and I was at the gym in my new office building when the news came on. Extremists had blown up a building. At first, no one knew how many dead, only that there would be far too many. And in that moment, terrorism stopped being something that happened in faraway countries. It was happening right here at home. Reporters said the terrorists hated the U.S. government and had ties to religious extremist groups. Now, did that mean that everyone in their religion or anyone that looked like them was a terrorist too? No, of course not. But I guess you could forgive people for thinking that way. And now, years later, I see that the mayor of that same city, the city that suffered such a terrible loss, follows the same religion as those terrorists. And what kind of message does that send? Isn't that a slap in the face to the people who lost friends and family that day? That day, April 19th, 1995, the day that Timothy McVay blew up the Oklahoma City Federal Building. Have we learned nothing? Should we mistrust everyone who looks like him or prays like him or votes like him? Do we have a patriotic duty to distrust those people? I don't know. I'm I'm just asking the questions. I'm Mike SmithGall, and this is today's Mic Drop. Now you probably assumed I was talking about 9-11, and most people would. The language, the imagery, the emotion, it all points there. That assumption is the point. When we hear extremist and religion and terrorism, our minds go to a single faith, Islam. We don't picture Timothy McVeigh, a white Christian man who bombed a federal building and killed 168 people, including children. We remember one kind of tragedy vividly, but we treat the other like a historical footnote. I bet a lot of people listening to this don't even know who he was. It could be the first time some people who have even heard of Oklahoma City as a bombing. The difference says everything about how we process faith, fear, and familiarity. After 9-11, suspicion landed on millions of Muslims who had absolutely nothing to do with the attacks. People lost their jobs, they were detained without cause, or simply stopped being treated as Americans. The message was we can't tell the good ones from the bad ones. When McVeigh bombed Oklahoma City, no one said we can't tell the good Christians from the bad ones. No one proposed background checks for Bible study groups or surveillance for militia-minded churches. We called McVeigh an extremist, but we didn't call Christianity an extremist religion. That's the asymmetry. When violence comes from someone familiar, we isolate the blame. When it comes from someone unfamiliar, we expand it to an entire population. Now, 25 years later, New York City has just selected its first Muslim mayor, Zoran Mamdani. And I'll be honest, I don't live in New York. I don't follow their politics very closely. From what I've seen over the last few months, he seems to have come out of nowhere. But there's no doubt he's now one of the most recognized politicians in the country. And right after his win, social media lit up. One meme in particular caught my eye. It was shared by former mayor Rudy Giuliani. The image showed the Twin Towers failing with a statement, New York, you forgot. The message was clear. Because Mamdani is a Muslim, his election somehow dishonors the memory of 9-11. That meme and the people spreading it are what I'm talking about today. Because that response says less about the new mayor and more about how selective our national memory has become. And as I mentioned, I don't really know that much about Zoran Mamdani, other than a few headlines. I'm neither a fan nor a detractor. I'm indifferent to his intentions as a New York mayor. If you have a non-religious reason to disagree with him, something about his policy or leadership, that's fair. But if your dislike or even hatred is mostly about his religion, that deserves some reflection. We've learned to equate Muslims with terrorists while giving a pass to extremists who look more like the majority. That's not justice. That's prejudice with patriotic branding. This is how comfort shapes judgment. When the dominant religion commits violence, we call it tragedy. When the minority religion does, we call it a threat. The majority faith gets invisibility. The minority faith gets suspicion. The majority's extremists are lone wolves. The minorities are cells. The language shifts, but the bias stays. Media and politicians, they know this. They sell fear because fear motivates. And identity is an easy handle to grab. But intolerance is not strength. It's insecurity dressed up as patriotism. Now I should be clear about something. As an atheist, I'm not on either side of this Muslim-Christian debate. Those two faiths are closer to one another than either one is to me. Both have good, warm-hearted people who just want to live their lives, raise their kids, and do right by one another. And both have extremists who twist their holy books to justify violence, oppression, and intolerance. If left unchecked, both would gladly turn government into theocracy, with their version of religion at the center. There are two sides of the same coin. I'm on a different coin altogether. And before anyone calls me naive, I know the data. In today's world, Muslim extremists are responsible for more acts of religiously motivated violence. That's true. But this isn't a scoreboard. Christians don't get to rest easy because their history includes crusades, inquisitions, witch hunts, and church-backed segregation and slavery. Every religion that fuses itself with political power ends up producing extremists who try to legislate beliefs. That's why we separate church and state. When government becomes an instrument of faith, it stops being government, it becomes enforcement. So if you want to test for leadership, make it civic, not sacred. Judge officials by competency, honesty, fairness, not by their prayers. Now, if hearing my opening made you think Muslim, that's proof the bias still lives in us. We don't mean for it to, but it does. We've been trained for decades to react to certain words, certain faces, certain prayers. And that's why memes like Giuliani's spread so easily. They don't rely on reason, they rely on reflex. Fear is always faster than thought. I know this episode will bring pushback. Every time I talk about religion and intolerance, the extremists crawl out of the comments. I'll get called names, I'll be accused of siding with terrorists or attacking faith. That's what happens when people can't separate ideas from identity. And you're going to have to forgive me if I don't engage every extremist who shows up to shout. But if you want an honest discussion, even if we disagree, I'm up for that because that's how adults talk. And that's how we move forward. So what does moving forward actually require? It requires seeing the world clearly. It means understanding that when fear decides who we should hate, truth and reason don't stand a chance. Terror has no religion. Fear only thinks it does. All right. Again, I'm Mike Smithco. I'll catch you on the next one. Thanks for tuning in. I really hope you enjoyed that. If you have a question for me or any of our guests, make sure you drop a comment. We'd love to hear from you. Hey, and do me a favor like and subscribe. That really helps us out and helps us bring you more conversations from beyond the league. And in the meantime, take care and remember reason and compassion go very long way.