Mamdani betrays moderate Muslims by palling around – Latest News
Some pictures seize a reminiscence we desperately need to neglect and a future we concern to face.
When Zohran Mamdani, the frontrunner for mayor, posed for a picture grinning arm-in-arm with Imam Siraj Wahhaj of Masjid At-Taqwa on Friday, he made a assertion that re-awakened the trauma of the phobia assaults on New York.
Visiting a radical Islamist like Wahhaj was not simply one other stop in Mamdani’s marketing campaign, however half of a sample of aligning with extremists.
Some politicians justify such alliances by ignorance of the numerous shades of Muslims and Islamists.
But with Mamdani’s wealthy cultural background, he ought to know higher. He ought to perceive the excellence between extremists and moderates.
It raises a critical query about whether or not Mamdani deliberately selected Wahhaj and his ilk as allies in his marketing campaign.
Wahhaj’s identify appeared on the listing of unindicted co-conspirators within the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
He testified in court docket as a character witness for the Egyptian terrorist Omar Abdel Rahman, referred to as the “Blind Sheikh,” who led the Salafi-Jihadist group “al-Gamaa al-Islamiya” and conspired to assassinate Egypt’s then-president Hosni Mubarak and bomb New York tunnels and the FBI headquarters.
From the witness stand, Wahhaj referred to as Rahman “a respected scholar” and “bold preacher of Islam.”
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Long earlier than 9/11, he instructed American Muslims that their mission right here was “to establish Allah’s religion [Islam],” and that politics must be “a weapon in the cause of Islam.”
In short, the person Mamdani selected to embrace, out of all New York Imams, is somebody whose radical ideological basis challenges American values of democracy and liberalism.
The political symbolism and strategic risk of associating with such an ideology whereas in search of the City Hall of America’s most various metropolis is difficult to unsee.
I write this as a liberal Muslim who grew up in Egypt and has intently noticed, studied, and resisted the unconventional Islamist ideology that Mamdani’s cozying up to Wahhaj represents.
For many years, the political Islamists and Wahhabi Salafists there mastered the artwork of utilizing mosques as marketing campaign platforms, remodeling prayer halls into venues for political mobilization.
The coupling of Mamdani and Wahhaj merely mirrors the ugly scenes of exploiting Islamic piety in Arab nations. That alone is a purple flag, not just for American Muslims, however for each American who nonetheless believes that democracy depends on ethical boundaries, and fears that the road between training democracy and endorsing extremism is starting to blur.
Mamdani, to his credit, represents a new era of various, articulate, and bold Democrats. Yet he’s additionally repeating the traditional silly errors of his get together’s predecessors by mistaking a radical, vocal minority for the true voice of a group.
In doing so, he betrays the silent majority of moderate American Muslims who’ve risked their security to keep extremism at bay. These are the quiet imams, the ladies advocating reform, the civic leaders who reconcile religion with freedom, and the group figures who places the American id and values first.
They are those who carry the longer term of Islam in America.
It is deeply disappointing, and nearly offensive, to see Mamdani systematically search validation from Islamist and leftist extremists relatively than construct alliances with moderates. It appears that he’s doing this on objective, relatively than out of ignorance.
This ought to function a resounding alarm that America’s ethical readability isn’t the one worth at risk. Far worse, the very foundations of American democracy are being slowly however absolutely undermined by the growing tendency of Mamdani-style candidates to emulate the practices of the unconventional leftists and the unconventional Islamists in some of the world’s most oppressive dictatorships.
Dalia Ziada is Coordinator and Research Fellow on the Institute of the Study of Global Antisemitism and Policy in Washington, DC.
