In the days after a homemade bomb laced with metal was hurled into a highly charged protest near his official residence in Manhattan, Mayor Zohran Mamdani did not turn to his typical means of communication.
There were no short-form videos posted to social media about the attack in front of Gracie Mansion, where Mr. Mamdani lives with his wife, Rama Duwaji. There were no impassioned speeches.
Mr. Mamdani chose an alternative path: two deliberative written statements, and one 14-minute joint appearance with his police commissioner, Jessica S. Tisch, a political moderate, during which they took only four questions.
Mr. Mamdani may have risen to power on the strength of his strong communication skills, but in moments that cut close to some of the city’s deepest fault lines and his own religious identity as the city’s first Muslim mayor, he has come to favor a more cautious and stiffer approach.
It is the strategy Mr. Mamdani relied on when protesters chanted in favor of Hamas outside a Queens synagogue hosting an event promoting American investment in Israel and the occupied West Bank. It is the approach he took as mayor-elect, after another group of protesters chanted “death to the I.D.F.” and “globalize the intifada” outside a synagogue hosting a similar event.
And it is the approach that Mr. Mamdani took this week after a pardoned Jan. 6 MAGA rioter, Jake Lang, mounted a “Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City” demonstration outside the mayor’s official residence on Saturday, during the holy month of Ramadan.
Counterprotesters outnumbered Mr. Lang’s supporters, with taunts and physical objects wildly thrown. And then a man lit and threw the homemade bomb into the street, causing chaos and fear but no injuries after the device failed to detonate.
Two men were charged in the suspected terrorist attack, and both cited the Islamic State after they were arrested.
On Sunday, the day after the attack, Mr. Mamdani issued a carefully worded statement denouncing both the Islamophobic protesters who came to Gracie Mansion and the two young men accused of trying to detonate homemade bombs.
“The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are,” he said.
On Monday morning, he and Commissioner Tisch held a news conference during which he defended the protesters’ First Amendment right to “appalling” speech, condemned the alleged act of “terrorism,” named the accused men and thanked the responding police for their “swift and decisive actions.”
A few hours later, federal prosecutors charged the two perpetrators with attempting to support the Islamic State. One of the men, Emir Balat, 18, told the police he had hoped to cause a deadlier incident than the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing, which he noted caused “only three deaths,” according to the criminal complaint.
Mr. Mamdani then released another short statement, describing the attack as “heinous.”
“We will not tolerate terrorism or violence in our city,” he said.
Mr. Mamdani’s rise was fueled, in part, by his uncommon aptitude for communicating to New Yorkers on social media, as well as his full-throated condemnation of Israel in its treatment of Palestinians. But he also governs the largest Jewish population outside Israel, in a city that has been targeted over the course of two decades by Islamic extremists.
Former Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, whose supporters suggested Mr. Mamdani was a jihadist during the mayor’s race, chided Mr. Mamdani for drawing what he said was a false equivalency between terrorists and those promoting hatred of Muslims.
Another frequent critic, Bruce Blakeman, the Republican Nassau County executive running for governor, tried to use the attempted bombing to bolster his campaign, arguing that it showed how Mr. Mamdani and Gov. Kathy Hochul had allowed lawlessness to take hold. (On the day of the attack at Gracie, Mr. Blakeman marched alongside a radio personality who recently referred to Mr. Mamdani as a “Radical Islam cockroach.”)
The mayor, 34, who declined an interview request for this article, appears content to let his written statements, and brief joint news conference with Ms. Tisch, speak for themselves.
Mr. Mamdani came of age in the pro-Palestinian movement and has spoken over the years about young Muslim men being stereotyped as terrorists or terrorist sympathizers. The mayor has himself been called a jihadist, with some right-wing figures calling for his deportation.
But a person close to the mayor offered a more prosaic explanation for his relative brevity: Mr. Mamdani has been entirely focused on the nuts and bolts of operating New York City during a security threat and making sure New Yorkers are safe.
Some argue he may also be missing an opportunity.
“Zohran Mamdani is the most prominent observant Muslim in American life. He has made his religious identity a central part of his political identity, and he has vowed to stop ‘biting his tongue’ in the face of Islamophobic attacks,” Reihan Salam, a Muslim who is the president of the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research, wrote in an email.
“That gives him unique credibility and authority to speak out against the chauvinism, extremism, misogyny and racism that exists within Muslim communities and that has spilled over into violence again and again.”
The last attempted terrorist bombing in New York City was in 2017, when a would-be suicide bomber’s homemade device only partially detonated in one of the city’s busiest subway stations, and he was the only person seriously injured.
“The terrorists are not going to win,” said Bill de Blasio, the mayor at the time. “We’re going to keep being New Yorkers.”
But history has shown that terrorists are likely to keep on trying. When Mr. de Blasio made those remarks, he was speaking just weeks after a terrorist driving a truck killed eight people along a Hudson River bike path.
“I think we’re unfortunately going to see more of this,” said Bill Bratton, the former police commissioner. “Good news, at least for New York City, is that New York probably still has the most robust counterterrorism capabilities of any city in America, even at a time when the F.B.I. has diminished somewhat its capabilities.”
Dana Rubinstein covers New York City politics and government for The Times.
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