JIHAD IN NY: Mamdani Ties to Muslim Brotherhood-Linked Mosque Raise Alarm

New York mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani has come under scrutiny after attending Friday services in January at a Brooklyn mosque long linked to the Muslim Brotherhood. Some Muslim critics are now urging voters to reexamine Mamdani’s alignment with the Brotherhood, a movement known for backing various terrorist groups and advocating for a global Islamic rule. The Brotherhood, which was recently outlawed in Jordan for destabilizing activities, has consistently shifted toward authoritarian rule wherever it gained power. Its vision includes the revival of an Islamic caliphate reminiscent of the pre-1924 era.

Mamdani’s alignment with the Muslim Brotherhood is not new. In 2013, as widespread demonstrations broke out in Egypt against then-President Mohamed Morsi, Mamdani publicly sided with Morsi’s Brotherhood-led administration. That same June, he took to Twitter to defend the group’s record in Egypt, publishing a lengthy thread titled “Unpacking Anti-Muslim Brotherhood Discourse.”

The Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, the mosque Mamdani visited, has a controversial past. The former imam once hailed Reem Al-Riyashi, a Hamas suicide bomber who blew herself up in 2004, as a “martyr” and rejected the notion that Hamas commits terrorism. The mosque’s association with extremism traces back to 1994, when a Jewish student was murdered near the Brooklyn Bridge in a retaliatory attack tied to the group, following the massacre of Palestinians in Hebron by an Israeli gunman.

President Donald Trump criticized Mamdani over his far-left economic views, declaring him “a communist” for advocating government control over industries and food distribution. Mamdani himself once joked on X (formerly Twitter), “the commie routine is cover for Sharia law” and added, “communism IS Sharia law.”

Zuhdi Jasser, who leads the American Islamic Forum for Democracy, voiced his concern over Mamdani’s dual ideological leanings. “This is a primary example of the red-green axis where you have a trained progressivist and Marxist promoting Socialism and also Islamism,” Jasser said.

The mosque’s imam, Sheikh Mohamed Elbar, who hosted Mamdani during the January visit, is affiliated with the International Union of Muslim Scholars (IUMS), a Qatari-financed group known for opposing normalization with Israel. Elbar has publicly denounced Muslim leaders willing to make peace with Israel and condemned those who called on Palestinians to lay down their weapons in 2018.

IUMS, largely led by Muslim Brotherhood members, has a history of supporting Hamas and harboring extremists, including individuals linked to al-Qaida. The group’s founder, Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, once gave his blessing to suicide bombings and declared that Islam would conquer the West—not by war, but through missionary work and immigration. “Islam will prevail and overcome all the religions,” Qaradawi said at a 1995 convention in Ohio. “Conquest through dawah, that is what we hope for. We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America! Not through the sword but through dawah.”

The IUMS’s platform aligns with the Muslim Brotherhood’s charter, which defines it as a global religious-political movement working to establish Islamic rule and ultimately a theocratic state.

Elbar has also made openly antisemitic remarks. In a 2014 protest in New York against Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, he accused Saudi Arabia of being “dirtier than the Jews” and accused them of selling out Egypt to Jewish interests. His hostility toward Israel is not confined to politics—it clearly crosses into hatred of Jews as a whole.

The New York Post revealed last August that Elbar prayed for the destruction of Israel and praised Hamas fighters. “Oh Allah, annihilate those who occupied their lands, and those who betrayed and deserted them, and those who spilled their blood,” he said. “The mujahideen [Hamas fighters] in Gaza are achieving more than our Arab armies could in 1967 and 1973.”

After the fall of the Brotherhood regime in Egypt, Elbar became a leading voice for Egyptian Americans for Democracy and Human Rights (EADHR), a group filled with Muslim Brotherhood loyalists. Egyptian officials have linked the group to fundraising for terrorist activities and promoting violent rhetoric. Elbar himself once expressed hope that President El-Sisi would be executed. “[O]nce people pledge allegiance to a Muslim ruler, it is forbidden to struggle against him and remove him, and if anyone removes him, he should be beheaded,” he said in Arabic at a 2016 rally. “Do you know who ought to be beheaded? Who should be stricken with the sword or hanged or detained? He who came to fight, and not the legitimate president [Morsi].”

At that same 2016 conference, which his organization co-hosted, Elbar appeared alongside Gamal Heshmat, a senior leader of the Muslim Brotherhood’s Guidance Bureau, revealing Elbar’s connections to the Brotherhood’s upper ranks.

Elbar’s veneration of the late Brotherhood Supreme Guide Mahdi Akef, who lauded Osama bin Laden as a “mujahid,” raises further concerns. When Akef died in prison in 2017, Elbar declared, “We ask Almighty Allah to elevate Mahdi Akef to the ranks of the martyrs … Oh Allah, he died as a Mujahid for your cause, so grant him the status of the Mujahideen.” A memorial for Akef was also held at the Bay Ridge mosque—an event only Brotherhood insiders would organize.

Zahack Tanvir, an Indian Muslim writer critical of Islamist ideology, said Mamdani’s engagement with Elbar and the Bay Ridge mosque reflects troubling priorities. “Zohran Mamdani’s visit to the Bay Ridge mosque and meeting with Imam Sheikh Mohamed Elbar, linked to Qatar and the Muslim Brotherhood, raises concerns about his priorities,” Tanvir told Newsmax. “While Mamdani champions progressive causes like Pride rallies, the imam’s views reportedly clash with those values, including harsh stances on issues like socialism and LGBTQ rights based on his interpretation of Islamic law.”

Tanvir added, “This Ilhan Omar league, supports the Islamists and empower them come what may. Quran speaks against Socialism, and the Imam is well-aware of it, and would be teaching his followers about how communism, socialism are the tools of Satan and Muslims eventually have to eliminate all Isms and establish Shariah.”

Mamdani’s supporters have dismissed the controversy, attributing it to anti-Muslim bigotry. Defenders include prominent Democrats and Islamist-leaning activists, as well as organizations such as the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “Many of the trends we are seeing mirror common Islamophobic content — Muslims as other and as a threat,” said CAIR’s Corey Saylor in a statement to The Guardian.

But CAIR’s roots raise their own questions. The organization was established in 1994 by figures tied to Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook and the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestine Committee, according to federal court documents. The Palestine Committee’s mission, per internal records, was to build support for Hamas in the U.S. In 2009, Judge Jorge Solis ruled in the Holy Land Foundation terror funding case that prosecutors presented “prima facie evidence” linking CAIR to a plot to back Hamas.

Mamdani’s admiration for the five men convicted in that 2008 case was publicly expressed in a rap he released in 2017, in which he declared his “love” for the “Holy Land Five.” The charity at the center of that case, the Holy Land Foundation, was founded by Marzook in 1990 and operated under the Brotherhood’s umbrella.

“He seems to be comfortable with … Islamist groups and speaks to the demagoguery,” Jasser observed. “Ideologically, he is obviously … because of his aspirations he stays silent on the theology, but that’s pretty typical of the political Islamists … Even though they don’t say it publicly, they are part of the political Islamist movement represented by the Muslim Brotherhood and the Khomenists that want to achieve the global caliphate.”

{Matzav.com}