In late September 2017, a photo posted to Facebook from a losing City Council race in Bay Ridge seemed unremarkable: a group of campaign volunteers kneeling on a Brooklyn sidewalk, fists raised, rallying behind Palestinian-American pastor Khader El-Yateem.

But that image — featuring activist Linda Sarsour in her trademark hijab and a young organizer named Zohran Mamdani — would, years later, come to symbolize the quiet beginnings of a political operation now sitting on the cusp of City Hall.

Eight years on, Mamdani — a self-described socialist, State Assembly member from Queens, and now the Democratic nominee for mayor — is the product of what critics describe as a sophisticated, well-funded coalition blending progressive activism, Muslim civic engagement networks, and traditional party infrastructure.

A Fox News Digital investigation published Monday traces how that network — anchored by two Sarsour-linked nonprofits, MPower Change and Emgage Action — helped build Mamdani’s rise from campus activist to front-runner in the nation’s largest city.

According to the report, more than 100 groups have thrown their weight behind Mamdani’s political ascent, including socialist organizers, labor affiliates, and Muslim advocacy groups.

At the center are MPower Change, founded by Sarsour in 2015, and Emgage Action, a national civic group promoting Muslim voter turnout. Together, the organizations have received roughly $2.5 million in recent years from philanthropies tied to billionaire financier George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, according to tax filings cited in the report.

An Open Society spokesperson told Fox News Digital that the grants “support peaceful democratic participation and human rights” and “occurred years before the mayoral race,” emphasizing that the foundation does not fund political candidates.

Still, the investigation outlines a coalition of roughly 30 ethnic and religious groups — from the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ political wing to Desis Rising Up and Moving — that have funneled volunteers, canvassers, and digital muscle into Mamdani’s campaigns.

What began as local organizing in Brooklyn evolved into a blueprint for Muslim political power inside the Democratic Party. Sarsour’s Muslim Democratic Club of New York, co-founded in 2013, became an incubator for progressive candidates and a launchpad for Mamdani himself, who joined the group’s board in 2018.

By then, the infrastructure was in place: voter databases, donor networks, and message discipline modeled on professional campaign operations — all under the banner of “Muslim empowerment.”

In 2020, Mamdani won his first race for the State Assembly. That victory cemented him as one of the rising stars of the Democratic Socialists of America and one of the most prominent Muslim elected officials in the state.

Now, with the backing of MPower Change, Emgage Action, and a web of progressive PACs, he’s mounting a full-scale challenge to New York’s Democratic establishment.

The network’s success has raised eyebrows — and alarms — across the political spectrum.

“This isn’t grassroots spontaneity,” said Dalia Al-Aqidi, an Iraqi-American journalist and congressional candidate in Minnesota, who has sparred with members of the same political orbit. “It’s an engineered movement that fuses socialist activism with Islamist organizing, funded by millions in foundation grants.”

The Fox News investigation also details Mamdani’s relationships with several controversial clerics, including Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn preacher who once served as a character witness for the “Blind Sheikh” convicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Mamdani recently visited Wahhaj’s mosque in Bedford-Stuyvesant and later called him “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders.” The visit drew criticism from Jewish and Christian groups after videos resurfaced of Wahhaj using incendiary rhetoric in past sermons.

Mamdani has not publicly addressed the controversy, and his campaign declined to respond to multiple media inquiries.

Financial disclosures cited in the report show MPower Change and Emgage Action drawing from a constellation of liberal foundations — including the Ford Foundation, MacArthur Foundation, and Tides Foundation — whose combined contributions to Muslim and South Asian civic groups exceeded $40 million since 2021.

Those funds have powered what Emgage calls its “Defend and Advance” campaign, which also supports candidates such as Virginia Lt. Gov. Ghazala Hashmi and Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud.

(YWN World Headquarters – NYC)