Zohran Mamdani, the Muslim democratic socialist who might well become the next mayor of New York City, didn’t just appear publicly with an unindicted coconspirator in the first terror attack on the World Trade Center. More recently, he made a relative a victim in the terror attacks that murdered nearly 3,000 people and leveled the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 20021.
Result: Fury and ridicule. Not that it will matter.
The latest on the Muslim radical mightn’t be enough for the man in second place in the mayor’s race, independent candidate Andrew Cuomo, to overcome the Uganda-born Indian’s lead. Cuomo came within 10 points of Mamdani in the latest poll. But the Real Clear Politics average of polls still has Mamdani way ahead.
Unindicted Terror Coconspirator
On October 17, Mamdani was all smiles when he appeared arm-in-arm with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, whom federal prosecutors fingered as an unindicted coconspirator in the 1993 WTC bombing.
As the New York Post reported, the 75-year-old chieftain of the Muslim Alliance of North America “has publicly defended the plotters of the attack against the FBI and CIA, whom he at the time dubbed the ‘real terrorists.’”
Indeed, Wahaj was major supporter of the notorious late “blind sheikh,” Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, convicted in 1995 of plotting “a cataclysmic ‘day of terror’: five bombs that were to blow up the United Nations headquarters, the Lincoln and Holland tunnels, the George Washington Bridge and 26 Federal Plaza, the Government’s main office building in New York, as The New York Times explained.
But that’s not all. The Post obtained a foreign intelligence report that fingered Wahhaj — real name, Jeffrey Kearse — as a serious national security threat to the United States.
“The evidence demonstrates that Mamdani’s political trajectory has not only been supported by activist movements but also reinforced by endorsements and alliances noted in figures with a documented history of extremist views and activities, posing a direct national security threat to New York City and the U.S.,” the report explained.
The religious figure also made headlines in 2018 when three of his children were arrested for keeping 11 kids living in “Third World” conditions in a compound made of garbage in the New Mexico desert.
One of the victims told prosecutors Wahhaj’s namesake son was training a 13-year-old and his teen brother to fight against non-believers through techniques including rapid reloads and hand-to-hand combat.
The intelligence report claimed Wahhaj homeschooled his children and likely shaped the extremist ideology of the busted terror cell.
However, Wahhaj has insisted he was the one who called the police on his sick son and two daughters, leading to their arrest. They were sentenced to life in prison last year.
None of that bothers Mamdani. “Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century,” he wrote on X.
Auntie Mamdani
As if that weren’t enough, Mamdani then hauled an aunt out of the family Islamic closet to protest “Islamophobia.”
“I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11th because she did not feel safe in her hijab,” he tearfully said during a talk outside the Islamic Cultural Center in The Bronx.
“Internet sleuths later claimed that a public health consultant, Masuma Mamdani, was the Democratic nominee’s only aunt, posting photos of her in which she appeared without a hijab and noting that she lived in Tanzania on 9/11,” the Post reported.
To that revelation, Mamdani explained that he was really speaking about his radical Marxist father’s second cousin. That explanation gave him the chance to denounce again — you guessed it — “Islamophobia.”
“For the takeaway from my more than 10-minute address about Islamophobia in this race and in this city, to be the question of my aunt, tells you everything you need to know about Cuomo and his inability to reckon with a crisis of his own making,” Mamdani complained.
But Mamdani’s error isn’t the problem, given that much-older cousins are often called aunt or uncle.
Rather, as Vice President J.D. Vance wrote on X, “according to Zohran the real victim of 9/11 was his auntie who got some (allegedly) bad looks.”
Cuomo’s Chances
Despite Mamdani’s communist proposals — freezing rent, “free” child care, “free” public transportation, a minimum wage of $30 per hour, “seizing the means of production,” and closing the Rikers Island jail complex that houses almost 8,000 inmates, who would be loosed upon the city — he enjoys a 15.6-point lead over Cuomo in the RCP average of polls, 46.3-30.7.
The latest Suffolk poll puts the former Democratic governor of New York 10 points behind. A Fox News poll in early October put Mamdani 24 points ahead, 52 points to 28.
Cuomo became Mamdani’s main opposition when incumbent Mayor Eric Adams dropped out of the race.
The only hope for Cuomo might be GOP Representative Andy Ogles’ effort to strip Mamdani of his citizenship because he lied, Ogles alleges, on his naturalization application.
Mamdani is a dual citizen of Uganda and the United States, and has been a citizen here for less than 10 years.
