Is Zohran Mamdani an Islamist?

The charge that newly elected New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani is an “Islamist” has mostly been derided either as Islamophobic or mocked as Boomer bait. In response, many cite Mamdani’s commitments to various leftist social causes that are antithetical to radical Islam, such as his promise to use $65 million in taxpayer funds for “sex change” operations. And indeed, he seems to use his Muslim faith as more of a chit in the great progressive oppression game—“Muslim and brown: two points!”—than being genuinely dedicated to its tenets, let alone the fundamentalist version of it.

However, his campaign’s success is owed at least partially to what may be New York City’s first politically organized Muslim voting bloc. It represents what is likely the beginning of a new chapter in the city’s long history of ethnic retail politics.

Even in his transition period, Mamdani’s deep connection to this voting bloc is clear. For example, Hassaan Chaudhary, the political director for Mamdani’s transition and inaugural committee, was not only outed by the New York Post for anti-Semitism, which is par for the course in left-wing politics, but also for the more traditional Muslim skepticism of gay rights, which is decidedly not.

Three incidents from Mamdani’s campaign stood out as notable, showing his connections to this growing group.

First, there was the almost entirely unremarked-upon photo of Mamdani arm-in-arm with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the unindicted co-conspirator from the first World Trade Center bombing in 1993. Even less remarked upon, the same radical imam, whose mosque was attended by several people connected to that act of terrorism that murdered six, was invited to an interfaith breakfast with then-Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams. Some pointed to this as evidence that Mamdani was not unique in befriending the radical imam. It indicates that even the hardest-line clerics are increasingly playing a more prominent role in Democratic Party politics in New York City.

Second, and relatedly, was the moment in the final debate where Mamdani landed a blow on rival Andrew Cuomo for failing to name a mosque he had visited on the campaign trail. For the mainstream media, the exchange was almost universally considered a win for Mamdani. The New York Times referred to Cuomo as a candidate who “has faced criticism for bypassing mosques as he seeks to become mayor,” cementing a new Democratic Party norm of formally campaigning in mosques, similar to how candidates are expected to make the rounds of black churches, exchanging political promises for votes.

Third, Women’s March organizer Linda Sarsour, who was exiled for her anti-Semitic views years back, bragged about Mamdani’s campaign being fueled by—and perhaps receiving cash from—the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR). “The story is not just that it’s random that Zohran ascended to this place, it’s our Muslim-American community,” she said just before the election, promising to elaborate after November 4. Sarsour also promised to hold the incoming mayor accountable to specific promises he made to his Muslim voting bloc, such as disbanding the NYPD’s Strategic Response Group unit that responds to violent protests like the pro-Palestinian march that shut down Grand Central Station last July.

While the U.S. Census doesn’t track religious categories, the best estimates place New York’s Muslim population at just under 800,000, or around 9%. That number is not too far behind the around one million Jews whose presence is so synonymous with the culture of the city that it spawned the (hopefully) affectionate nickname “Jew York City.” It would be foolish to imagine that such a large voting bloc would not substantially affect the city’s politics and culture on a similar level. And indeed, in polls and voting demographics that broke down respondents by religion, Mamdani’s overwhelming stronghold was most often the “other” category—meaning a strange hodgepodge of atheists, Hindus, other minority religions, and Muslims.

Religious and ethnic politics in America are, of course, nothing new. But in the case of recent Muslim arrivals in particular, it raises serious questions about whether this kind of retail politics can operate without massive consequences when the people in question share a religion and culture that is alien to America’s Christian roots.

This high number of Muslims in America’s flagship urban center is a recent phenomenon. Again, precise numbers are hard to come by, but some estimates place the number of Muslims in New York City in the 1980s and early 90s in the tens of thousands, implying a potentially tenfold increase since the days of 9/11. And in this mayoral election, they managed to wield their voting power and help put Mamdani in office.

Despite his explicit religious and ethnic pandering, Mamdani himself is more likely to restore peak woke’s sexual politics commitments than Sharia law. Like his Columbia professor father, he synthesizes his identity politics not as a jihadi but as a member of the global “wretched” oppressed class. But like the “Queers for Palestine” signs that draw laughter for their obvious superficial contradictions, it is wrong to imagine that this alliance between progressives and Islamists can’t hang together, united in common enmity for the West and America.

At the height of the Palestinian demonstrations in New York City that began after Hamas’s slaughter of 1,200 mostly civilians on October 7, there was a notable divide between the Queers for Palestine in the West Village, with fashionably draped kaffiyehs, and the angry young men marching in the Palestinian-heavy Bay Ridge, Brooklyn neighborhood. But they were clearly united around a common goal.

It’s easy to mock this growing alliance by imagining drag queens in Actual Gaza. But that domestic woke activists would likely not fare well in a theoretically Islamist-run country doesn’t blind them to the more immediate reality: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. And Mamdani seems to have easily seamed his Muslim voting base to his other set of enthusiastic voters: overly educated, downwardly mobile progressives.

So is Zohran Mamdani an Islamist? Not quite, but along with the mayor’s race in Minneapolis and the politics and culture of Dearborn, Michigan, his election represents political Islam flexing its first muscles in the United States. Judging by the manifest problems this is currently causing in the U.K. and Europe, it’s a sign of more aggressive things to come if America does not substantially change its current course on immigration from Muslim-majority countries.

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