New York Times accused of framing Muslims as true victims of 9/11 in anniversary coverage

The New York Times on Friday was accused of treating Muslims as the true victims of the terror attacks of September 11, 2021, but the paper insists any criticism is a "disingenuous" attempt to stoke outrage.

"The Times can't remember 9/11 without bemoaning a ‘wave of hate’ and ‘anti-Muslim prejudice,’ NewsBusters executive editor Tim Graham told Fox News Digital.

The Times’ published a story headlined, "After 9/11, Islamophobia Shaped a Generation of Muslim New Yorkers," that said the "attacks unleashed a wave of hate, but the years since have seen Muslim Americans’ political and cultural influence grow." LIBERAL VIRGINIA SCHOOL DISTRICT: DON'T LINK 9/11 TERROR ATTACKS TO 'ISLAM OR MUSLIMS' Times reporters Liam Stack and Maya King wrote about "once-friendly neighbors" allegedly keeping their distance from American Muslims on the heels of the terror attacks, suggesting that many "have faced a quarter-century of suspicion and hostility." "In New York, a generation of Muslim New Yorkers responded to the Islamophobia by organizing their communities: Mosques hosted makeshift legal clinics.

Small businesses became hubs in a citywide civil rights network.

Muslims of different racial, ethnic and linguistic backgrounds formed alliances the city had not seen before," Stack and King wrote.

"Their political organizing helped, years later, to elect the city’s first Muslim mayor, Zohran Mamdani," they continued.

"But anti-Muslim prejudice still endures, echoing the Islamophobia that arose in the earliest days after Sept.

11." The Times’ story, which was published hours before the somber anniversary of the attacks that killed 2,977 people at the World Trade Center in New York City , the Pentagon and aboard United Flight 93 near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, said the attacks also "left many Muslim American communities scarred by heavy-handed law enforcement tactics and the suspicion, if not outright hostility, of classmates, co-workers, elected officials and cable news commentators who blamed all Muslims for the terrorism they, too, had experienced that day." MAMDANI FACES GROWING 9/11 BACKLASH AS OLD POST RESURFACES AHEAD OF GROUND ZERO CEREMONY: 'IS THIS REAL?' The Times then spoke with Afaf Nasher, the executive director of the New York chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations, who said that Muslim Americans were "pushed against the wall" and were faced with the decision to "run in fear" or push back.

"Political empowerment was certainly one way that we are pushing back," Nasher told the Gray Lady.