MAMDANI'S BOMBSHELL WTC TERROR LINK

Zohran Mamdani's Dangerous Liaisons: A Mayoral Candidate Unfit for Office

In the shadow of New York City's enduring scars from terrorism, Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunning Democratic candidate for mayor, has thrust himself into a controversy that exposes profound flaws in his judgement. On a recent Friday, Mamdani attended prayers at Masjid at-Taqwa in Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant neighbourhood, emerging with a beaming photograph alongside Imam Siraj Wahhaj. This cleric, once named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, embodies a legacy of radicalism that should disqualify any aspiring leader from public trust. Mamdani's post captioned the image glowingly: "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." Yet, for those who remember the van bomb that claimed six lives and injured over a thousand beneath the North Tower, this alliance reeks of historical amnesia and reckless endangerment.

Retired FBI agents, whose careers were defined by unravelling the threads of that 1993 atrocity, have condemned Mamdani's embrace of Wahhaj in stark terms. Frank Pellegrino, a key investigator of the attack, expressed visceral revulsion at the sight. "Zohran Mamdani’s embrace of Siraj Wahhaj is an example of Mamdani’s ignorance of history. Either he doesn’t know who Wahhaj is or he doesn’t care. Whichever it is, Mamdani looks foolish," Pellegrino stated. His colleague, John Anticev, the lead case agent on the bombing, echoed this dismay, urging political caution. "Everybody who is in politics should be aware of the people whose endorsement they’re getting," Anticev said. "Imam Siraj Wahhaj has been a cleric who has endorsed a radical agenda." These are not abstract critiques from distant observers, but warnings from men who sifted through the rubble and confronted the plot's architects. Mamdani, a toddler at the time of the blast, appears blissfully detached from this grim chapter, courting a figure whose past entwines with its perpetrators.

Retired FBI agent Frank Pellegrino and John Aticev, who investigated the Feb. 26, 1993 attacks. 

Wahhaj's record is a litany of entanglements with extremism that no serious candidate should overlook. Born Jeffrey Kearse, he founded Masjid at-Taqwa in 1991 and soon sponsored appearances by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the "Blind Sheikh" convicted of masterminding the 1993 bombing. Prosecutors later identified Wahhaj as an unindicted co-conspirator. Though never charged, he served as a character witness for Abdel Rahman in court, describing him as a "respected scholar." Wahhaj also raised funds for El Sayyid Nosair's legal defence, the assassin of Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990, who was later convicted of seditious conspiracy linked to the World Trade Center plot. Nosair now serves a life sentence. In a 1991 videotaped address, Wahhaj urged Muslims to wield politics as a tool for Islamic conquest: "I just want to say this. Brothers and sisters, in my opinion what the Muslims do in America will have a profound effect on Muslims everywhere on this earth. As long as you remember that if you get involved with politics, you have to be very careful that your leader is for Allah. You don't get in politics because it's the American thing to do. You get involved in politics because politics can be a weapon to use in the cause of Islam." Such rhetoric, blending democratic participation with theocratic ambition, reveals a philosophy antithetical to American pluralism.

Wahhaj's influence extends to more recent outrages. In 2011, he rallied support for Aafia Siddiqui, the "Lady Al Qaeda" serving 86 years for attempting to murder US troops and her ties to 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. "I think that she is innocent," he declared at a fundraiser. "There’s reasonable doubt, and by law, if there’s reasonable doubt, you have to acquit." Earlier, in 1992, he fantasised about supplanting democracy: "you wouldn’t have to vote for Bush or Clinton… we’d elect our own emir and give allegiance to him." By 1995, he branded America "a garbage can. Filthy. Filthy and sick," and at an Islamic Society of North America conference that year, he brandished a Qur’an while advocating its replacement for the US Constitution. In 2003, he told the Wall Street Journal that a sharia-governed society, with stonings for adultery and amputations for theft, "would be superior to American democracy." His sermons rail against the US government as "controlled by Shaitan," warn against befriending non-believers, decry homosexuality as "a disease of this society," and endorse lashes or stonings for extramarital sex. Even children are not spared his isolationism: "Don’t you know our children are surrounded by kafirs? ... when our Muslims hang out with the non-Muslim, you become just like them." Wahhaj's family life mirrors this darkness; in 2018, three of his children were arrested after authorities uncovered 11 malnourished youngsters in a New Mexico compound, where one grandchild perished during a botched exorcism.

Mamdani's affinity for Wahhaj is no isolated lapse but part of a pattern of alliances with radicals and apparent criminal enablers. His campaign's super PAC, "New Yorkers for Lower Costs," pocketed $100,000 from the "Unity and Justice Fund," linked to the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial. That case saw five leaders convicted of routing $12.4 million to Hamas, earning decades in prison. Mamdani has rapped sympathetically about these "Holyland Five." Nihad Awad, CAIR co-founder and Wahhaj ally, openly celebrated Hamas's 7 October 2023 rampage into Israel. This is the company Mamdani keeps, even as he flip-flops on disarming Hamas, refusing calls to urge it just a day before softening his stance. Reformist Muslims view this as a betrayal. Dalia Ziada, a Washington coordinator at the Institute for the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy, warns that Wahhaj peddles the Islamism that birthed Middle Eastern terror. "I am particularly concerned to see mosques used as political rallying platforms in the free and democratic United States," she said. "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." Soraya Deen, founder of the Muslim Women Speakers Movement, recoils at the optics. "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 highlights the photo's exclusion of women, aligning with Wahhaj's ban on them in main mosque halls to avert "sexual temptation," a stance that undermines global Muslim women's rights struggles.

This web of connections deepens with Mamdani's entrenched ties to far-left extremism, revealing a candidate whose radicalism threatens public safety and communal harmony. As a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) stalwart, Mamdani rode to his 2020 state assembly seat on a platform of "Defund the police" and "Abolish jails." He signed the DSA's "Agenda for Decarceration," championing the eradication of cash bail, decriminalisation of drug possession and prostitution, elimination of mandatory minimums, and retroactive sentence reductions, all while vowing to dismantle the "carceral system that exacerbates interpersonal violence." Critics decry this as a blueprint for chaos, emboldening criminals in a city still reeling from post-pandemic spikes in violence. Mamdani's current mayoral pitch ambiguously touts "community policing," deflecting queries about his past with evasions like "It’s not a part of the mayoral platform," without renouncing his anti-police zeal. Such inconsistency signals not evolution, but opportunism, unfit for a mayor tasked with safeguarding New Yorkers.

Worse still, Mamdani's DSA loyalty drags him into antisemitic quagmires. The group brands Israel an "apartheid state" and backs the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, whose steering committee includes Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, both US-designated terror outfits. DSA chapters, including Mamdani's New York affiliate, justified the 7 October massacres without naming Hamas, instead lauding "resistance" at rallies chanting "Globalize the Intifada" and "Smash the settler Zionist state." Mamdani refuses to condemn this violent slogan, a stance branded antisemitic under the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition for glorifying harm to Jews in radical ideology's name. His DSA ties fuel primary threats against moderate Democrats, alienating allies like Rep. Ritchie Torres, who deems him "not even a Democrat." Even as top party figures like Chuck Schumer remain mute, this extremism invites exploitation by opponents, endangering Jewish New Yorkers amid surging hate crimes, with 96.4% of far-left incidents tied to anti-Zionism.

Zuhdi Jasser, former US Navy Lt. and head of the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, cuts to the core: "There’s nothing more clarifying on the Islamist extremism and dangers of Zohran Mamdani than his friendship with known anti-American jihadi Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Mamdani’s fealty to one of America’s most radicalizing clerics tells you everything you need to know." Wahhaj's mentorship of figures like Linda Sarsour, who champions "from the river to the sea" chants and exited the Women's March over antisemitism claims, only amplifies the peril. For moderate Muslims striving to purge faith of fanaticism, Mamdani's photo-op is a setback. As Ziada laments, "It sends the wrong message to moderate Muslims who are working hard to separate faith from extremism. 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."

Zohran Mamdani's trajectory, from DSA firebrand to mayoral hopeful, lays bare a leader whose judgements prioritise radicals over residents, extremists over equity, and hidden agendas over healing. New York deserves better than a mayor whose allies include bombing co-conspirators, terror financiers, and chaos architects. His unsuitability is not mere misstep, but a manifesto for division and decline. Voters must heed the FBI's disgust, the scholars' alarm, and history's echo before casting ballots that could scar the city anew.