New York City mayoral frontrunner Zohran Mamdani is under fire after campaigning side by side with a Brooklyn imam once identified by federal prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing — and who has a long record of inflammatory sermons calling for “jihad” in New York.

Mamdani, a self-described socialist and left-wing Democrat, appeared beaming in a photo with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, posted to X after Friday prayers at Brooklyn’s Masjid At-Taqwa. Also pictured was Councilman Yusef Salaam (D-Manhattan), a member of the exonerated “Central Park Five.”

“Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj,” Mamdani wrote on social media, calling him “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders.”

But Wahhaj, 75, is a deeply polarizing figure. He was named by prosecutors as an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 bombing that killed six people and injured more than a thousand. He has also publicly defended some of the convicted plotters, calling the FBI and CIA the “real terrorists.”

In sermons documented by U.S. intelligence agencies, Wahhaj called for an “army of 10,000 men” to wage a “gun-free jihad” on New York, saying, “Let them hear your voice… until the whole city can’t sleep.”

“The fact that Mamdani stands with this imam is disqualifying,” said Republican mayoral nominee Curtis Sliwa. “New York needs a mayor who protects New Yorkers from terrorism, not embraces terrorists.”

The imam’s controversies extend beyond rhetoric. Three of his children were convicted of running a terrorist training compound in New Mexico, where prosecutors said they trained minors to fight nonbelievers. Wahhaj has said he was the one who alerted police, but investigators believe his ideology shaped the cell’s extremist leanings.

Wahhaj, who leads the Muslim Alliance in North America, has long served as a mentor to activist Linda Sarsour, one of Mamdani’s closest political allies and a prominent critic of Israel and U.S. counterterror policy.

Security analysts say Mamdani’s appearance with Wahhaj raises troubling questions about the candidate’s political alliances.
“The evidence demonstrates that Mamdani’s political trajectory has been reinforced by figures with documented extremist views,” an intelligence assessment noted, warning of “a direct national security threat to New York City.”

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)