(LifeSiteNews) — Far-left New York Democrat Gov. Kathy Hochul is facing criticism for donning a Muslim hijab at an Islamic community event, less than two weeks before New York City commemorates the 25th anniversary of the Islamic terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
The South Shore Press reports that Hochul was appearing before the Islamic Center of New York wearing a traditional Muslim head garment. It is not the first such controversy for the governor, who last August defended wearing a hijab to a slain Muslim police officer’s funeral as an act of “basic decency.”
Hochul has yet to comment on the latest incident, but earlier this year she declared her goals of “uplifting Muslim communities across our state” and working to “ensure every Muslim New Yorker is seen, heard, and respected.”
Conservative critics, however, said that the hijab is a symbol of female oppression in the Muslim world and starkly hypocritical for American “feminists” who claim women are “oppressed” in America by mainstream pro-life policies (Hochul is vehemently pro-abortion). One of Hochul’s fellow New York Democrats, socialist U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, drew similar criticism in May for wearing a hijab to another Islamic event.
Democrats: “Sexist Republicans are turning America into the Handmaid’s Tale!”
Also Democrats: pic.twitter.com/7lWhOtvXFN
— Brandon Gill (@realBrandonGill) August 30, 2026
Such displays highlight a persistent tension in so-called progressives’ dominant political strategy of playing to the perceived grievances of various groups based on ethnic, religious, or sexual identity in that occasionally those groups’ dominant values can come into conflict.
In the United States, for instance, leftists regularly cast homosexuals, “transgenders,” and Muslims (among others) as ongoing victims of institutionalized discrimination and deep-seated cultural bigotry (despite the LGBT movement enjoying so much cultural dominance as to make “Pride Month” an annual nationwide custom), yet majority-Muslim countries in the Middle East are known for subjecting homosexuals to violence and abuse virtually unheard of in present-day America.
By contrast, leftists commonly deploy the labels “homophobia” and “transphobia” against individuals who merely hold religious views of sexual morality incompatible with homosexuality or object to the notion that gender is a malleable social construct while nevertheless treating individuals with homosexual inclinations or gender confusion humanely.