Muslims are blasting Zohran Mamdani’s association with controversial Imam Siraj Wahhaj, warning that legitimizing the former terror suspect could fuel radical extremism.
“I am particularly concerned to see mosques used as political rallying platforms in the free and democratic United States,” said Dalia Ziada, a Muslim scholar and fellow at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy.
“By embracing Wahhaj, Zohran Mamdani is sidelining moderate Muslims and normalizing an extremist ideology that once inspired terror on American soil and still fuels radicalization within segments of the Muslim community today,” she told Fox News.
The dire concern comes after Mamdani, 34, posted a photo of himself visiting with Wahhaj, 75 — a man federal prosecutors once considered an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the fatal 1993 World Trade Center bombing and who once even called on Muslims to infiltrate American democracy for use as a “weapon” of Islamic causes.
Despite those allegations and Wahhaj’s past comments, Mamdani — New York City’s leading mayoral candidate and a lefty Democratic Socialist — called the prominent imam “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century” after meeting with him Friday.
Ziada said she fears that Mamdani’s embrace of Wahhaj will set back American Muslims who reject religious extremism by deepening the prejudice they have come to face from past terror attacks.
“It sends the wrong message to moderate Muslims who are working hard to separate faith from extremism,” she said. “And it tells the broader American public that those aspiring to lead this country have forgotten what extremist ideology once did to New York’s skyline.”
Wahhaj was suspected in the 1993 terror attack that killed six people after some of its masterminds attended his mosque.
He was never indicted because of a lack of evidence and has always maintained his innocence — but he later defended the attackers and called the CIA and FBI the “real terrorists.”
Wahhaj has also openly denounced the US government as being controlled by the devil and even once told the Wall Street Journal that America would one day be “persuaded” into embracing a society of strict Islamic law where adulterers are stoned and thieves’ hands are cut off.
His own son is serving a life sentence after being convicted of keeping a band of teenagers at a squalid New Mexico encampment where he trained them for violent terror attacks. Wahhaj has described his son’s behavior as “sick” at the time and said he called police to stop him.
Despite Wahhaj’s insistence that he does not embrace violence and that he has no association with terrorists, some Muslims aren’t put at ease — and even less so by Mamdani’s embrace of the controversial imam.
“I was stunned and bewildered by his call to destroy America and make Islam great,” said Soraya Deen, founder of Muslim Women Speakers Movement, of the first time she saw Wahhaj speak 20 years ago.
Deen — whose organization advocates for Muslim women opposed the religion’s extremist views — noted that there wasn’t a woman present in any of the photos Mamdani posted from Wahhaj’s mosque.
“Despite the gender jihad women are facing in the Muslim world, Mamdani poses for a photo op that emboldens the men suppressing women’s rights,” she told Fox.
“A theologian spewing hatred for the United States — and Mamdani smiling beside him, calling him ‘one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders’ — is dangerous for America and dangerous for Muslims,” she said.
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