News/Commentary

Mamdani backs New York City candidate who faulted America for 9/11

November 19, 2025 | | Print Article

Concerns about “Islamification” took on a new dimension in New York City as a candidate who faulted America for 9/11 earned Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani’s (D) first endorsement.

Much as COVID had reawakened parents to the need to pay attention to the curriculum of the children, thanks to remote learning, Mamdani’s election in Gotham was proving to be a catalyst in restoring scrutiny of the growing reach of radical Islamism in the United States.

As protests took place in the so-called Islamic capital of the country — Dearborn, Michigan — and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) took strides to ban certain Muslim organizations from acquiring land in the Lone Star State, New York’s soon-to-be first Muslim mayor backed Hamas-sympathizing activist Aber Kawas for State Assembly.

“[Mamdani] told me that while he has tremendous respect for everyone in this race, he has said that he will support Aber in whatever she pursues,” sources said Mamdani transition team adviser Sam McCann told a closed-door gathering of the Democratic Socialists of America last week, according to the New York Daily News.

In addition to holding a master’s degree in Islamic Liberation Theology from a South African university, the candidate vying to fill New York’s 34th State Assembly district as incumbent Jessica González-Rojas (D) launched a campaign for state Senate, has gone on the record blaming colonization and capitalism as well as “white supremacy” for the September 11, 2001 terror attack that took the lives of 2,977 people and counting.

Speaking on an Asian American Writers’ Workshop panel in 2017, Kawas had said, “the system of capitalism and racism, and white supremacy, etc., have all — and Islamophobia — have all been used, you know, to colonize lands, right, to take resources from other people, and so this is, like, a long trajectory. And we’re just seeing the manifestations of that continuation, right, with 9/11.”

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“If you look back historically, right, you know, a lot of us come from lands that were colonized, lands where wars are being waged, right, and a lot of times because of U.S. policy or the policies in Europe,” she said.

The political hopeful was also on record defending convicted al Qaeda financier Fahad Hashmi and attempted terrorist Ahmed Ferhani, who had plotted to blow up a synagogue in Manhattan.

The Daily News further reported that Kawas’ adviser Joe Stanton had told those gathered at the DSA meeting, “We have to actually run a Palestinian Arab in this race because we need to draw the fire of the Israeli lobby, and we have to beat them.”

“We did it with Zohran, and people have started realizing that they don’t run things,” he added.

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As Mamdani himself had attempted to spin a sob story naming an “aunt” as a victim of the terror attack because of alleged feelings of discomfort wearing a hijab in the city and had been seen embracing radical imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted coconspirator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, reactions on social media saw the endorsement as just “another domino in New York City’s downfall.”

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Kevin Haggerty
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