Mamdani and the Left’s Alliance With Radical Islam
He won’t impose Shariah on New York, but his views give plenty of reason for legitimate concern.
By Sadanand Dhume
Zohran Mamdani in New York, July 15. Photo: Spencer Platt/Getty ImagesIs Zohran Mamdani a radical Islamist?
Contrary to what some Republicans have suggested, the answer is clearly no.
But while the democratic socialist front-runner to be New York’s next mayor isn’t going to establish a caliphate on the Hudson, we shouldn’t be dismissive of Mr. Mamdani’s unhealthy obsession with Israel.
It is an indication of how radical Islam is gaining acceptance on the left.
Over the past few weeks, Mr. Mamdani—a Uganda-born Shiite Muslim of Indian origin—has faced a barrage of attacks and insinuations centered on his Muslim background.
Silicon Valley investor Shaun Maguire accused the candidate of coming from “a culture that lies about everything” and of advancing an “Islamist agenda.”
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia posted on social media an image of the Statue of Liberty in a black burqa.
Conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer claimed that Mr. Mamdani deliberately chose to become a U.S. citizen in 2018 on the anniversary of Hezbollah’s release of a 1985 manifesto calling for the destruction of Israel.
These contretemps make little sense.
Nowhere has the candidate hinted at imposing Shariah, or Islamic law.
Mr. Mamdani’s wife, a Syrian-American artist, doesn’t wear the hijab.
He wants to make New York an “LGBTQIA+ sanctuary city” and once tweeted: “Queer liberation means defund the police.”
It’s hard to think of an idea less likely to resonate with the Muslim Brotherhood or the mullahs in Iran.
Absurd attacks on Mr. Mamdani enable him to shift focus from statements and actions by him and his family that New Yorkers have legitimate reason to worry about.
Mr. Mamdani’s father, Mahmood, is a Columbia professor of government who has written of his desire to destigmatize suicide bombings.
The candidate’s mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, reportedly tried to have Gal Gadot disinvited from the Oscars because the actress has “openly and repeatedly expressed her support for Israel’s military actions.”
Does Mr. Mamdani agree with his parents?
Nothing suggests a difference of opinion.
Mr. Mamdani’s old tweets show that in his 20s he appeared more preoccupied with civil rights for the likes of Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev and U.S.-born al Qaeda leader Anwar al-Awlaki than with the suffering of their victims.
More recently, Mr. Mamdani has appeared alongside the Turkish-American podcaster Hasan Piker, who once said that America “deserved 9/11.”
Mr. Mamdani also has a long record of anti-Israel activity.
As a co-founder of Bowdoin College’s Students for Justice in Palestine, he backed boycotting Israeli institutions.
One of his songs during his short-lived rap career praised the Holy Land Five—men convicted by a U.S. court of providing material support for terrorism by funding Hamas.
Mr. Mamdani’s immediate response to the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack didn’t mention Hamas and instead accused Israel of “occupation” and “apartheid.”
Mr. Mamdani refuses to condemn calls to “globalize the intifada.”
Last month, Mr. Mamdani attended a comedy show with Mahmoud Khalil, an Algerian-Palestinian activist from Columbia University who the Trump administration has accused of “hateful behavior and rhetoric” that threatened Jewish students.
All this may not make Mr. Mamdani an Islamist, but it does make him appear sympathetic to Islamists.
Once, someone like Mr. Mamdani couldn’t have been a member in good standing of the left.
But for at least two decades leftist groups and Islamists have formed a de facto alliance based on their common contempt for Israel in particular and the West in general.
The French call this phenomenon Islamo-gauchisme.
For Islamic extremists, the alliance with the left provides cover.
Someone who seeks to annihilate Israel because he can’t stomach the idea of Jews living on what was once Muslim-controlled land can clothe this atavistic urge in the respectable language of human rights.
But the oddness of the left—in theory allergic to God—making allowances for Muslims that it won’t make for others hasn’t escaped notice.
“Most leftists . . . have no difficulty fearing and opposing Hindu nationalists, zealous Buddhist monks, and the messianic Zionists of the settler movement,” the Princeton philosopher Michael Walzer wrote in 2015.
Yet the left won’t blame religious extremism for “Islamist militants who kidnap schoolgirls, or murder heretics, or tear down the ancient monuments of rival civilizations.”
Why is Mr. Mamdani unwilling to reassure voters by adopting a more moderate stance?
The answer to this question could shape the future of New York.
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