Sarsour-backed political network propels NYC mayoral candidate Mamdani

In late September 2017, Palestinian American activist Linda Sarsour, as soon as the darling of the Ladies’s March and the self-declared face of the “resistance” in opposition to Donald Trump, was facing mounting criticism for antisemitic remarks and her embrace of extremist views. 

However, beaming in {a photograph} taken on a metropolis sidewalk, Sarsour appeared unfazed, her iconic fist pumped within the air as she knelt shoulder-to-shoulder with marketing campaign volunteers for Metropolis Council candidate Khader El-Yateem. The picture was posted by El-Yateem on the Fb web page he used to advertise his marketing campaign, which he misplaced, however among the many smiling faces was a younger organizer named Zohran Mamdani.

In late September 2017, Palestinian American pastor Khader El-Yateem shared a photograph of his marketing campaign workforce from his bid to be elected to New York’s Metropolis Council from Brooklyn’s District 43. Palestinian American political organizer Linda Sarsour (far left, entrance row) took a knee with Zohran Mamdani (fourth from proper, white shirt). El-Yattem misplaced the race. (@Khader El-Yateem/Fb)

That picture would mark the beginning of a fastidiously constructed political challenge that, in lower than a decade, would propel a now-34-year-old socialist newcomer to the precipice of operating America’s largest metropolis – even whereas campaigning with radical imams, a few of whom have supported terrorists and terrorist financiers.

A Fox Digital investigation reveals that Mamdani’s rise was no accident. It was engineered.

SEN. SLOTKIN SAYS DEM SOCIALIST NYC CANDIDATE MAMDANI REPRESENTS ‘NEW GENERATION’ OF LEADERS YOUNG VOTERS WANT

Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks throughout a mayoral debate, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP Picture/Angelina Katsanis, Pool)

A database of 110 teams backing Mamdani exposes a good inside circle of organizations that establish as Muslim or socialist, working hand-in-glove with 76 Democratic Get together associates, allied teams and unions. Significantly essential on this political machine are two networks – Sarsour’s MPower organizations and one other constellation of teams known as Emgage, with which she works closely.

The organizations have been generously funded. In complete, billionaire George Soros’ Open Society philanthropies have given MPower and Emgage practically $2.5 million in recent times, in keeping with tax filings. 

“#MyMuslimVote Organizing Summit” with Zohran Mamdani, then the Democratic nominee for the thirty sixth District to New York’s Basic Meeting, Ladies’s March cofounder Tamika Mallory and former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed. ( MPower Change/e-mail)

“We fund a spread of civil society organizations that work to deepen civic engagement by peaceable democratic participation, counter discrimination together with in opposition to Muslim Individuals and advance human rights,” a spokesperson for Open Society Foundations instructed Fox Information Digital. “The grants that you just cite all occurred years earlier than the mayoral race, and we’re a nonpartisan group that doesn’t fund political candidates and their campaigns.”

Mamdani, Sarsour and the teams supporting Mamdani’s marketing campaign did not return requests for remark.

MPower and Emgage have been a part of a good inside circle of 30 ethnic and non secular teams, that additionally contains CAIR Action, the 501(c)(4) political wing of the 501(c)(3) Council on American-Islamic Relations nonprofit, the Islamic Circle of North America,“ “Muslim Action Coalition,” Yemeni American Merchants Associations Inc., the “Bangladeshi American Advocacy Group” and “Desis Rising Up and Moving.” They’ve pumped up Mamdani’s marketing campaign with social media campaigns, canvassing, voters and buzz.

Altogether, they’ve annual revenues of about $24 million, they usually have labored to advertise Mamdani’s marketing campaign with endorsements, fund-raising, social media campaigns and canvassing.

The outcome: a fastidiously constructed political profession that mainstreams the socialist objectives long embraced by Sarsour and fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America.

It’s a machine that’s expressing itself in races from New York to Virginia, Minnesota, Texas and California with MPower and Emgage aligning with the Democratic Socialists of America and the Democratic Get together to propel candidates who might share their views. In a marketing campaign known as “Defend and Advance,” Emgage SuperPac is pushing Mamdani and Democratic Virginia Lt. Governor candidate Ghazala Hashmi as its “star candidates.”

Emgage’s “Defend and Advance” roster of supported candidates and workplace holders contains Dearborn, Mich., Mayor Abdullah Hammoud.

“I need you to know as mayor, you aren’t welcome right here,” Hammoud lately instructed a Christian pastor who objected to a proposal to call a road in honor of an area man who had allegedly praised terrorist teams Hamas and Hezbollah. “And the day you progress out of town would be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the truth that you moved out of town as a result of you aren’t anyone who believes in coexistence.”

Emgage’s donations embrace $175,000 from a gaggle little-noticed by political observers however essential in Islamist circles: Sterling Charitable Gift Fund, based mostly in Herndon, Va. It’s a part of a network of groups that FBI agents raided in 2002 as a part of wider investigations into the funding of Palestinian terrorist teams, together with Hamas. Federal prosecutors finally didn’t file legal costs in opposition to any officers at Sterling Charitable Present Fund.

MEET MAMDANI’S RADICAL ADVISORY CIRCLE THAT INCLUDES COMMUNIST ACTIVIST, ANTI-ISRAEL ADVOCATES

Hungarian-born U.S. investor and philanthropist George Soros smiles after delivering a speech on the sidelines of the World Financial Discussion board (WEF) annual assembly in Davos on Might 24, 2022. (FABRICE COFFRINI/AFP through Getty Photographs)

Over nearly a decade, Sarsour and her allies have orchestrated a community of well-financed and tightly linked socialist activists, radical imams, political organizers and nonprofit organizations funded with hundreds of thousands of {dollars} by main philanthropies, together with Basis to Promote Open Society, the Ford Basis, Macarthur Basis and the Tides Basis.

The confluence of massive philanthropy, partisan operatives and clerical authority has helped drive Mamdani’s ascent. Its structure combines nonprofit activism with faith-based politics and the precision of an expert marketing campaign operation. 

“To the informal observer, Zohran Mamdani’s rise would possibly seem meteoric – a narrative of grassroots vitality and demographic change in America’s largest metropolis,” mentioned Dalia Al-Aqidi, an Iraqi American Muslim who’s operating in opposition to Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar in Minnesota, with Omar supported by the identical form of political machine being unleashed to propel Mamdani to workplace.

“The information, the cash path and the affiliations, from the Democratic Socialists of America to the Islamists, tells a unique story.”

“Mamdani’s ascent is the product of deliberate design: a classy collaboration between socialist activism and Islamist organizing, lubricated by hundreds of thousands in basis grants and political donations and normalized by a revolving door of political operatives and nonprofits who embrace Islamists, the destruction of the state of Israel and hostilities to the police, the U.S. and the West,” Al-Aqidi mentioned.

The timeline of Mamdani’s rise tracks exactly with the expansion of this community. In 2012, as a pupil at Bowdoin School, in Maine, he cofounded a chapter of College students for Justice in Palestine, the campus group recognized for its rabid anti-Israel activism. By 2017, he was canvassing for El-Yateem’s marketing campaign with Sarsour’s mentorship.

Activist Linda Sarsour, proven right here at an illustration in Manhattan’s Foley Sq., was an early backer of Mamdani’s political aspirations. (Picture by Erik McGregor/LightRocket through Getty Photographs)

In 2018, Mamdani formally entered Sarsour’s orbit by the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, a corporation she co-founded in 2013 to mobilize Muslim voters and elect progressive Democrats to native workplace. The Muslim Democratic Membership of New York served as each incubator and amplifier for Sarsour’s political model, one which fused progressive politics with an explicitly Islamist social id. By December 2018, Mamdani joined the board, in an announcement through which the group mentioned, “Assist construct Muslim energy throughout town with us!”

UNEARTHED VIDEO EXPOSES MAMDANI’S ‘UNABASHED’ COMMITMENT TO SUPPORTING ANTI-ISRAEL SANCTIONS AS LAWMAKER

Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani supporters collect exterior 30 Rock in New York Metropolis on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.  (Fox Information Digital/Deirdre Heavey)

Along with his new function, Mamdani gained entry to an rising infrastructure of affect: voter lists, donor networks and organizing muscle that will later energy his marketing campaign to a seat on the New York Basic Meeting. The Muslim Democratic Membership endorsed Mamdani.

Round that point, Sarsour was constructing her personal empire, founding MPower Change as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit housed at Neo Philanthropy Inc. Public filings present MPower Change took in at the very least $2.4 million between 2017 and 2024, the most recent yr accessible, with Soros’s Basis to Promote Open Society giving her group $1.125 million and the Macarthur Basis funneling her $450,000. It could develop into a flagship digital organizing hub for not simply Sarsour however Mamdani. 

In the meantime, Emgage Motion was increasing its footprint nationally. Additionally backed by the Open Society community, Emgage Motion acquired a share of $42.5 million that Soros’ foundations pledged to Muslim, Arab and South Asian civic teams starting in 2021. It has acquired $1.8 million from the Open Society Coverage Heart and one other $1.35 million from the Basis to Promote Open Society.

Collectively, MPower Change and Emgage created an unprecedented monetary and political ecosystem, leveraging massive philanthropy’s {dollars} and digital technique to elevate candidates like Mamdani underneath the banner of Muslim empowerment.

In 2020, Mamdani won his first election to the New York State Meeting, with Sarsour’s specific endorsement and fundraising assist.

By 2020, Mamdani was being featured in Sarsour’s #MyMuslimVote summit, promoted by MPower Change because the face of a brand new technology of unapologetic Muslim progressives. By this yr, his marketing campaign for mayor turned the fruits of that challenge — backed by PAC cash, boosted by clerical endorsements and legitimized by an activist ecosystem that had spent a decade grooming him for this very second.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK LABELS NYC MAYORAL CANDIDATE ZOHRAN MAMDANI A ‘JIHADIST’

New York Metropolis Democratic mayoral nominee, Zohran Mamdani, spoke to supporters at a canvass launch occasion in Prospect Park on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025.  (Deirdre Heavey/Fox Information Digital)

To push Mamdani towards the helm of the nation’s largest metropolis, the community prolonged far past activist circles. Central to Mamdani’s political ascent was a sequence of fastidiously cultivated relationships with clerics with some troubling views.

In January, Mamdani courted Imam Muhammad Al-Barr of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, visiting his mosque simply months after Al-Barr had publicly prayed to “annihilate” Israel.

In Might, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the longtime imam of Brooklyn’s Masjid At-Taqwa, personally donated $1,000 to the Unity and Justice Fund. Extra lately, Mamdani met with Wahhaj and known as him “one of many nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Mattress-Stuy group.”

Wahhaj, who served as a personality witness within the trial of Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” later convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Commerce Heart bombing, has a protracted historical past of calling for the exploitation of America’s democracy to additional a conquest for Islam.

“You do not get in politics as a result of it is the American factor to do,” he mentioned in a videotaped 1991 sermon. “You become involved in politics as a result of politics could be a weapon to make use of in the reason for Islam.” 

Wahhaj has also denounced the U.S. authorities as “managed by Shaitan,” the Arabic phrase for the satan, urged Muslims to not befriend “non-believers,” condemned homosexuality as “a illness of this society,” and supported Islamic legal guidelines that punish intercourse exterior of marriage with 100 lashes and stoning. In 2011, Wahhaj urged Muslims to donate to the legal defense of the since-convicted Aafia Siddiqui, a Pakistani neuroscientist dubbed “Woman Al Qaeda” for making an attempt to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.

Through the years, Wahhaj’s sermons have praised “jihad” with out “a gun,” known as for an Islamic America ruled by sharia regulation and urged the creation of an “army of 10,000 men in New York City.”

Different imams now backing Mamdani’s mayoral run have additionally been controversial. Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, a cleric main the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, co-founded the Muslim Alliance in North America, alongside Wahhaj. In 2005, Abdur-Rashid publicly defended Rafiq Sabir, an American physician who joined al Qaeda and was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in jail.

DNC EMBRACES SOCIALIST MAMDANI AS RESURFACED ANTI-ISRAEL REMARKS RAISE ALARM: ‘BIG TENT PARTY’

Impartial candidate and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, speaks throughout a mayoral debate with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, heart, and Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York Metropolis. (AP Picture/Angelina Katsanis, Pool)

In 2008, Abdur-Rashid defended Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian American professor whom the U.S. later deported to Turkey for “conspiring to provide services” to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Nonetheless within the U.S., Al-Arian’s spouse joined the anti-Israel encampments at Columbia College.

In September, Mamdani appeared because the particular visitor speaker at Abdur-Rashid’s annual gala. A month earlier, Muslim Affiliation of North America’s social media featured Abdur-Rashid visiting Wahhaj’s mosque, underscoring the continued collaboration between the 2 imams.

In Manhattan, Imam Khalid Latif, the chief director of the Islamic Heart at New York College, has been one other distinguished Mamdani backer. Latif publicly endorsed Mamdani on Fb in June, calling him “a bearer of compassion in a time the place it’s far too uncommon.”

In 2012, Latif led a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia that included Omar Mateen, who would later homicide 49 individuals on the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest anti-LGBTQ assault in U.S. historical past. He has denied radicalizing Mateen and he hasn’t confronted the identical kind of allegations that encompass the opposite imams.

Zohran Mamdani meets Imam Siraj Wahhaj and Yusef Abdus Salaam on Oct. 17, 2025. (@ZohranKMamdani/X)

For a lot of Muslim political organizations backing Mamdani, these clerics usually are not liabilities however property, serving as trusted gatekeepers to town’s rising group of Muslim voters.

After Mamdani visited Wahhaj’s mosque earlier this month, he tweeted out a photograph of the 2 with the caption: “Pleasure to satisfy Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of many nation’s foremost Muslim leaders.” When a firestorm ensued, a number of allies rose to his protection: Sarsour, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the leaders at Emgage Motion.

Sarsour shared a selfie with Mamdani, beaming, like they did again in 2017, and wrote, “Might Allah proceed to bless and defend you.”

A defiant Wa’el Alzayat, the chief director of Emgage Motion, despatched out a dispatch to followers on Tuesday, amid criticism for his or her political work, promising, “We’re on this for the lengthy haul.”

Again in Minnesota, Al-Aqidi intently watched the protection of Mamdani.

“For over a decade, Linda Sarsour and her community of allies have constructed the Mamdani machine piece by piece: the establishments, the donors, the narratives and now, the candidate. There was no method they have been going to throw him underneath the bus for one picture with one imam whom they occur to like,” mentioned Al-Aqidi. “Mamdani is the recent face of a radical coalition, and I hope New Yorkers will reject him. Win or lose, one truth stays simple. His rise was not spontaneous. It was engineered and the equipment behind it’s only getting stronger.”

Al-Aqidi mentioned; “I hope New Yorkers will shut the Mamdani machine down.”