Andy Bell

“Less than 24 hours after spending much of a televised New York City mayoral debate fending off questions about Hamas, front-runner Zohran Mamdani told a small group in Brooklyn how he really felt. ‘When I stand on that stage,’ said Mamdani, 34, before an all-male crowd dressed in caftans and skullcaps, ‘and I have a former governor trying to make me feel ashamed for standing up for universal human rights—and extending them to Palestinians as well—I know I am not alone.’ The crowd erupted. ‘Allahu Akbar,’ several men shouted gleefully in a video of the speech obtained by The Free Press. Other men who were there cried out ‘takbīr,’ an Arabic call to praise God. This wasn’t your typical campaign event held at Boys & Girls Clubs or the home of a major donor. It was a ‘pre-Jummah address’ held at Masjid At-Taqwa, a Brooklyn mosque led by Siraj Wahhaj, whose name appeared on a list drawn up by federal prosecutors of ‘unindicted persons who may be alleged as co-conspirators’ in the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center. In a photo later posted to X by Mamdani, he beamed beside Wahhaj and called him ‘one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century.’ That imam, a Brooklyn native born Jeffrey Kearse, has long been linked to radical Islam. He served as a character witness for Omar Abdel-Rahman—the notorious ‘Blind Sheikh’ convicted in 1995 of plotting terrorist attacks against the United States. When asked about his relationship to the ‘Blind Sheikh’ in court, Wahhaj replied, ‘I respect him.’ A former follower of the Nation of Islam—a radical, pro-segregation group—Wahhaj resurfaced similar themes in his address on Friday.”—@Olivia_Reingold