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Asad Dandia, founder of New York Narratives, on St. Nicholas Avenue near West 113th Street during a walking tour on Aug. 23, 2025. (Adi Talwar\/City Limits)<\/p>\nAsad Dandia, a community organizer, Muslim New Yorker, and urban history tour guide is a rising star with friends in high places.<\/p>\n
Asad Dandia, founder of New York Narratives, on St. Nicholas Avenue near West 113th Street during a walking tour on Aug. 23, 2025. (Adi Talwar\/City Limits)<\/p>\n
Asad Dandia is busy, but never in a rush.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs New Yorkers, we always want to go. We want to go from point A to point B and I get that the city is constantly on the move, but I invite you to stop and to just look,\u201d said Dandia.<\/p>\n
Dandia was leading 12 of us on a walking tour of Harlem, pointing out important spots for Muslim history: New York\u2019s first mosque, the headquarters of one of the nation\u2019s first Latino-Islamic organizations, Malcolm X\u2019s place of worship.<\/p>\n
The tour required walking\u2014two and a half miles in all\u2014but Dandia glided over the pavement, beckoning listeners forward, answering questions without breaking stride.<\/p>\n
He said the city is like a palimpsest<\/a>: a tablet etched with ancient writing that\u2019s been effaced and rewritten, over and over again.<\/p>\n \u201cThink of New York not as an undifferentiated mass of buildings, but as a collective of people who add layers of depth to the story,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A tour guide, urban historian, professor, storyteller, organizer, and native New Yorker, Dandia is like a palimpsest too.\u00a0<\/p>\n He touched the current of history in the early 2000s, when he was a victim of an NYPD effort to surveil Muslim communities in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn, in the wake of 9\/11.<\/p>\n While in college in 2011, Dandia founded a volunteer community organization. A year later, one of the members\u2014who had come to events, distributed food, and ate at his family\u2019s dinner table\u2014confessed that he was an NYPD plant reporting on Dandia\u2019s community.<\/p>\n In 2013, Dandia joined<\/a> an American Civil Liberties Union lawsuit to end NYPD\u2019s undercover surveillance operations targeting people by race, religion, or ethnicity.<\/p>\n \u201cThis sent us reeling. Our sacred spaces had been violated. We didn\u2019t know who to trust, or where we could turn for help,\u201d Dandia wrote in 2020<\/a>.<\/p>\n Dandia\u2019s palimpsest is layered with the scars of that first political awakening.<\/p>\n Through his tour company New York Narratives, he tells the untold histories of Muslims and other New Yorkers. \u201cI want people to know not just the stories of success and survival but also the stories of struggle,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n His tours cover Harlem, Brooklyn\u2019s Atlantic Avenue, and Little Syria<\/a> in Lower Manhattan, which was demolished in the 1940s to make space for the Hugh L. Carey Tunnel to Brooklyn.<\/p>\n \u201cI even had some naysayers suggest that my area of focus is too specialized and too niche, and therefore there\u2019s not going to be a mainstream demand for it,\u201d said Dandia. \u201cIt turned out that they were wrong.\u201d<\/p>\n His message seems to be catching on. A few weeks ago he gave Comptroller Brad Lander<\/a> and his family a private tour of Brooklyn. He teaches a class at CUNY Guttman Community College. His tour company has more business than ever.<\/p>\n His social media accounts (@AsadFromNYC<\/a>) have grown in popularity, particularly on X, generating interest in local politics, history, and nerdy urban fun<\/a>.<\/p>\n Undeniably warm but a self-described introvert, Asad weighs in on the story of the day online, participates in discourse on what it means to be a New Yorker<\/a>, and increasingly, signals his rising influence<\/a> in local politics. He\u2019s in a group chat with X-semi-famous New York City political nerds Michael Lange<\/a> and Adam Carlson<\/a>.<\/p>\n Lange, a political analyst, told City Limits that Asad is endlessly curious and wise beyond his years.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHe\u2019s someone who\u2019s just really naturally curious, likes to read, likes to walk, likes to meet new people,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I think that\u2019s the best skill you can have, if you\u2019re curious and you work hard, you can go really far in a place like New York.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAsad is someone who understands a real wide spectrum of New Yorkers,\u201d added Lange.<\/p>\n Dandia\u2019s rise has coincided with the rise of another prominent Muslim New Yorker: Democratic nominee for mayor Zohran Mamdani.<\/p>\n \u201c12 years ago, I was standing in front of the police headquarters to launch this lawsuit, and 12 years later, I\u2019m friends with a guy that\u2019s gonna be the boss of the police department,\u201d said Dandia, who is confident Mamdani will win in November. \u201cSo sometimes life can be a cinema.\u201d<\/p>\n Dandia counts himself as a \u201cgood friend<\/a>\u201d of Mamdani, and, when called, has offered advice to the campaign that catapulted the three-term assemblyman into pole position in the mayoral race.<\/p>\n Mamdani won in parts of the city that surprised many in the establishment, but not Dandia.<\/p>\n \u201cBrighton Beach went for Zohran, where I grew up. It wasn\u2019t Russians, it was Pakistanis who came out for him,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n As for the doubters, pundits, and media who cast cold water on a Muslim\u2019s chances to be mayor, \u201cThey\u2019re all late,\u201d said Dandia. \u201cI\u2019m not surprised that they\u2019re late because they didn\u2019t think our communities were worth learning about.\u201d<\/p>\n Dandia says he\u2019s\u00a0 fighting for a more optimistic vision of New York, that\u2019s inclusive and full of opportunity for people from every background.<\/p>\n On tour, he told the story of Bengali Muslims immigrating from South Asia, some of whom jumped ship into New York Harbor, settled in Harlem, and built families with Black and Puerto Rican New Yorkers in the mid-20th century. It\u2019s a lesser told history that, to Asad, shows the persistence of immigrants that helped build New York.<\/p>\n \u201cBelonging is something that is often fought for, not something that is granted,\u201d he said.\u201cI\u2019m very optimistic, thanks to Zohran\u2019s victory, and thanks to the fact that all of these communities have come out and finally, believe in [a] New York that they can be part of.\u201d<\/p>\n To know the city, you have to walk it. It helps Asad see the hidden layers of history.\u00a0Walking, \u201cyou can see worlds change kind of in front of you, and there\u2019s a lot of power in that, and a lot of storytelling,\u201d added Lange.<\/p>\n If people stop and look closely at New York, they might just see themselves in it.<\/p>\n To reach the reporter behind this story, contact [email\u00a0protected]<\/a>. To reach the editor, contact [email\u00a0protected]<\/a><\/p>\n![\"Asad](\"https:\/\/citylimits.org\/wp-content\/plugins\/trx_addons\/components\/lazy-load\/images\/placeholder.png\")
(Adi Talwar\/City Limits)<\/p>\n(Adi Talwar\/City Limits)<\/p>\n(Adi Talwar\/City Limits)<\/p>\n(Adi Talwar\/City Limits)<\/p>\n