Washington, DC — On July 4, Shaun Maguire, a top investor at Sequoia Capital, posted a fiery message on X, taking aim at New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani.
That stray post has now morphed into a storm engulfing Big Tech and diaspora politics in the US.
Maguire labeled Mamdani, 33, a Muslim, democratic socialist born to Indian parents, as an "Islamist" pursuing an "Islamist agenda."
The Bay Area tech bro, who partners with Sequoia ($85 billion in assets under management), went further, declaring that Mamdani "comes from a culture that lies about everything" and adding ominously, "It's literally a virtue to lie if it advances his Islamist agenda".
Mamdani's parents are of South Asian origin. His father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a widely regarded Columbia professor of Gujarati extraction, while his mother, Meera Nair, a filmmaker, is originally from Punjab in India.
What followed Maguire's slander was a cascade of condemnation from both Muslim Americans as well as Hindu nationalists, who, it is worth noting, have long been contributing to anti-Muslim sentiments and supremacist ideas in the US.
Old stereotypes, new dangers
There was a stir in the hallowed tech world, also.
Within 48 hours, nearly 600 leading tech founders and executives had signed an open letter calling for remedial action by Sequoia, including a public apology, an independent investigation, a zero-tolerance hate-speech policy, and a hotline for reports of discrimination.
Three founders of startups that have scaled the hierarchy through the famed accelerator programme Y Combinator added their names to the letter.
Signators have called Maguire's language "a deliberate, inflammatory attack that promotes dangerous anti‑Muslim stereotypes", underscoring how the Internet-fuelled echo chamber had amplified the damage.
Hisham Al‑Falih, the CEO of Lean Technologies, a leading Middle-Eastern tech startup, told Bloomberg that Maguire's post was "a sweeping and harmful generalisation of Muslims, but part of a broader pattern of Islamophobic rhetoric that has no place in our industry".
Identity under attack
For Muslims, these were familiar tropes: portraying a global faith as extreme, reinforcing long-standing and debunked biases.
What made the outrage particularly unusual was who else found Maguire's post offensive — sections of the Hindu nationalist movement who took issue with his sweeping statement about "culture."
Within the digital realm of the Hindutva far-right, the backlash reverberated powerfully across forums and social media platforms.
The push back was quick, as has been the case in previous instances, when nationalists have found their identity being insulted or misrepresented.
One right-wing voice on X protested: "This man called the entire Indian culture a lie."
For many on the Hindu right, rarely sympathetic to Mamdani, Maguire's sweeping generalisation appeared to smudge Indian identity itself, something tethered to the Hindutva ideal.
That these two ideological poles, Muslim-Americans and Hindu far-right, shared outrage over a contemporary issue highlights the strange unity that Maguire's words created.
While one side saw Islamophobia, the other saw cultural defamation. Both saw identity under attack.
In the aftermath, Maguire published a nearly 30-minute video on X explaining his post, saying clearly: "To any Muslim that is not an Islamist, and to any Indian that took offense to this tweet, I am very, very sorry."
He stressed that "Islamist" referred to a political ideology, not religion.
For many Muslim Americans, it was an influential, white man from Silicon Valley who had resorted to cheap Islamophobia, labelling everything as political and suspect.
Muslim tech leaders were also quick to stress that this wasn't merely a critique of Mamdani; it was a false claim conflating identity with ideology.
For far-right Hindu groups, it was equally incendiary. Maguire had tarred Indian heritage by association, disrespecting a culture already faced with diaspora anxieties.
Shockwave in Silicon Valley
Within Sequoia, concern followed swiftly.
The open letter from tech leaders included signatories like Hosam Arab (Tabby CEO) and Ahmed Sabbah (Telda), calling on the firm to act by July 14 or "proceed with broader public disclosure, media outreach and mobilising our networks".
Maguire has "a documented pattern of anti-Muslim rhetoric over the past two years" and "caused significant harm to the global tech community," the letter noted.
Prominent Indian-origin tech leaders like Ankur Shah (Straiker), Neil Gehani (Lumara), Nikhil Dixit (Arbor), and Rajesh S Parmar (Indelible) were also among the signatories to the letter condemning Maguire's remarks.
The ideological tug-of-war in Silicon Valley has highlighted polarisation, as much ideological as technological, underscoring how private sector speech can trigger outsized public reaction in digital societies.
With July 14 looming, Sequoia will decide whether to take action.
