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2 retired FBI representatives who examined the 1993 World Trade Center battle informed Fox News Digital New york city City mayoral prospect Zohran Mamdani is “absurd” to project with an imam connected to the attack’s mastermind.
Mamdani went to prayers Friday at Mosque at-Taqwa on Fulton Street in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant community, later on publishing a smiling image with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn cleric who worked as a character witness for the mastermind of the battle and has actually been a long time protector of founded guilty terrorists, raising funds for their legal defenses.
” Today at Mosque At-Taqwa, I had the enjoyment of conference with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, among the country’s primary Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy neighborhood,” composed Mamdani, who was a young child when terrorists parked a bomb-laden van in the garage below the North Tower of the World Trade Center.
Zohran Mamdani tweeted Friday about his conference with Imam Siraj Wahhaj and Yusef Abdus Salaam. ( @ZohranKMamdani/ X)
Retired FBI representative Frank Pellegrino, who examined the Feb. 26, 1993 attack, stated seeing the frontrunner to be the city’s next mayor with Wahhaj left him worried.
” Zohran Mamdani’s welcome of Siraj Wahhaj is an example of Mamdani’s lack of knowledge of history. Either he does not understand who Wahhaj is or he does not care. Whichever it is, Mamdani looks absurd,” Pellegrino stated.
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John Anticev, another retired FBI representative who was the lead case representative on the 1993 attack, informed Fox News Digital Mamdani ought to understand much better than to court a recommendation from somebody like Wahhaj.
” Everyone who remains in politics ought to understand individuals whose recommendation they’re getting,” Anticev stated. “Imam Siraj Wahhaj has actually been a cleric who has actually backed an extreme program.”
Wahhaj, born Jeffrey Kearse, established the Brooklyn mosque in 1981 and has a long history of debate. Following the World Trade Center attack, district attorneys noted he sponsored looks by Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the so-called “Blind Sheikh” who was later on founded guilty of masterminding the plot. Wahhaj wasn’t charged with any criminal offenses and has actually rejected participation in the attack. Wahhaj likewise raised legal-defense funds for El Sayyid Nosair, who assassinated Rabbi Meir Kahane in 1990 and was likewise founded guilty of seditious conspiracy in connection with the 1993 battle.
Wahhaj didn’t react to an ask for remark.
In court, Wahhaj worked as a character witness for Abdel Rahman, calling him a “highly regarded scholar.” In witness testament, he likewise confessed raising legal defense funds for Nosair, who was at first acquitted in the killing of Kahane, however is now serving a life sentence.
New York City City Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks throughout an interview on “The Story with Martha MacCallum” at Fox News on Wednesday, Oct. 15, 2025, in New York City City. ( Image by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP)
For Muslims who oppose Wahhaj’s ideological analysis of political Islam, called Islamism, Mamdani’s alliance with Wahhaj is a troubling window into what his mayoral term might bring, with his obligations to groups and leaders with Islamist compassions and anti-American and anti-semitic views.
Muslim scholar Dalia Ziada, Washington, D.C., planner and research study fellow at the Institute for the Research Study of Worldwide Antisemitism and Policy, stated Wahhaj represents the exact same Islamist ideology that sustained years of extremism in the Middle East.
” I am especially worried to see mosques utilized as political rallying platforms in the complimentary and democratic United States,” she stated. “By accepting Wahhaj, Zohran Mamdani is sidelining moderate Muslims and stabilizing an extremist ideology that when motivated fear on American soil and still fuels radicalization within sectors of the Muslim neighborhood today.”
Soraya Deen, creator of the Muslim Females Speakers Motion and a co-founder of the Clearness Union, a network of Muslims, ex-Muslims and allies challenging Islamist extremism, heard Wahhaj for the very first time twenty years back in a speak with Muslim youth in Los Angeles.
” I was shocked and confused by his call to ruin America, and make Islam fantastic,” she stated.
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Deen called the image of Mamdani with Wahhaj troubling, keeping in mind, “A theologian gushing hatred for the United States– and Mamdani smiling next to him, calling him ‘among the country’s primary Muslim leaders’– threatens for America and harmful for Muslims.”
In the image, there isn’t a female to be seen, since Wahhaj likewise practices the analysis of Islam that rejects females access to the primary hall of mosques, thinking they would sexually lure the males hoping within. Deen stated, “Regardless of the gender jihad females are dealing with in the Muslim world, Mamdani positions for a media event that pushes the males reducing females’s rights.”
In June, a political action committee supporting Mamdani, “New Yorkers for Lower Expenses,” accepted $100,000 contributions from the ” Unity and Justice Fund,” a political action committee connected to the Council on American-Islamic Relations, a group designated an unindicted coconspirator in the trial of 5 Holy Land Structure leaders. The 5 leaders were founded guilty of funneling about $12.4 million to Hamas and sentenced to years in jail. Mamdani has actually consisted of supportive lyrics about the “Holyland 5” in a rap. Previously this year, Nihad Awad, a co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations and a close ally of Wahhaj, stated he was “pleased” about the Oct. 7, 2023, rampage by Hamas terrorists into Israel.
Likewise, Wahhaj has actually preached an approach of making use of America’s democracy to advance a conquest for Islam. In 1991, according to a video of the occasion, Wahhaj informed an event of Muslims: ” I simply wish to state this. Bro and sis, in my viewpoint what the Muslims perform in America will have an extensive impact on Muslims all over on this earth. As long as you bear in mind that if you get included with politics, you need to be extremely cautious that your leader is for Allah. You do not get in politics since it’s the American thing to do. You get associated with politics since politics can be a weapon to utilize in the reason for Islam.”
Frank Pellegrino, retired FBI representative, who examined the 1993 World Trade Center attacks. ( Frank Pellegrino)
In 2011, Wahhaj advised Muslims to contribute to the legal defense of Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist called “Girl Al Qaeda” for trying to eliminate U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan.
” I believe that she is innocent,” he informed a Worcester, Massachusetts, charity event. “There’s affordable doubt, and by law, if there’s affordable doubt, you need to acquit.”
Siddiqui, who worked as a carrier to Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, the mastermind of the 2001 attack on the World Trade Center, is serving an 86-year sentence at a Texas federal jail for tried murder and several other felonies.
In a 1992 talk, Wahhaj stated that if American Muslims joined, “you would not need to elect Bush or Clinton … we ‘d choose our own emir and offer loyalty to him.”
3 years later on, he shared his views on the U.S., stating, “You understand what this nation is? It’s a trash bin. Filthy. Filthy and ill.”
Previous U.S. Navy Lieutenant Leader Dr. Zuhdi Jasser experienced a keynote address by Wahhaj in 1995 at the Islamic Society of The United States and Canada conference, where the imam held up a Qur’ an and stated his desire to change the U.S. Constitution with Islamic law.
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” There’s absolutely nothing more clarifying on the Islamist extremism and risks of Zohran Mamdani than his relationship with recognized anti-American jihadi Imam Siraj Wahhaj,” stated Jasser, now president of the American Islamic Online Forum for Democracy. “Mamdani’s fealty to among America’s the majority of radicalizing clerics informs you whatever you require to understand.”
A transform, Wahhaj, 75, increased to prominence as a bridge in between immigrant Muslim leaders and America’s Black Muslim converts. He has actually headlined fundraising events for groups connected to the Muslim Brotherhood, consisting of the alphabet soup of companies that specialists think about tradition groups for the Muslim Brotherhood: the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the Islamic Circle of The United States And Canada (ICNA), and the Muslim American Society (MAS).
In 2003, he informed the Wall Street Journal that a society ruled by rigorous Islamic law, where adulterers are stoned and burglars’ hands are cut off, “would transcend to American democracy.”
In talks, Wahhaj knocked the U.S. federal government as “managed by Shaitan,” the Arabic word for the devil, advised Muslims not to befriend “non-believers,” condemned homosexuality as “an illness of this society,” and supported Islamic laws that penalize sex beyond marital relationship with 100 lashes and stoning. He knocked Muslims befriending non-Muslims, stating, “Trouble to the Muslims who select kafirs,” or non-Muslims, “for good friends.”
New York City City Democratic mayoral candidate, Zohran Mamdani, spoke with fans at a canvass launch occasion in Possibility Park on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025. ( Deirdre Heavey/Fox News Digital)
Wahhaj even advised Muslims to disallow their kids from making good friends outside the faith.
” Do not you understand our kids are surrounded by kafirs?” he stated. “I’m informing you, making the hearts of our kids corrupt, unclean, nasty. It’s clear, the concepts are clear. Birds of a plume, they state, flock together. Therefore, when our Muslims socialize with the non-Muslim, you end up being much like them. You talk much like them. You do what they do, you dress the method they dress, you act the method they act, you wish to be much like them, since their hearts are corrupt, and now they’re damaging your heart.”
His individual life has actually likewise been watched by scandal. In 2018, 3 of Wahhaj’s kids were apprehended after authorities found 11 malnourished kids residing in a New Mexico substance where among his grandchildren had actually passed away throughout a tried exorcism.
The welcome of such a figure has actually sparked argument over Mamdani’s judgment and the Democratic Celebration’s tolerance for extreme associations. Wahhaj stays a revered figure amongst some Islamist activists, consisting of Linda Sarsour, who in 2017 called him “a coach” and “my preferred individual in the space.” Sarsour left the Women’s March, which she co-founded, in the middle of allegations of antisemitism. She has actually led a number of the anti-Israel marches given that the Oct. 7 attack, leading chants of declaring Israel “from the river to the sea.”
For reform-minded Muslims, nevertheless, the image of an increasing American political leader commemorating Wahhaj brings grim importance.
” It sends out the incorrect message to moderate Muslims who are striving to different faith from extremism,” stated Ziada. “And it informs the wider American public that those desiring lead this nation have actually forgotten what extremist ideology when did to New york city’s horizon.”
Editor’s Note: An earlier variation of this post improperly described Imam Siraj Wahhaj as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 battle of the World Trade Center.
Source: Fox News.
