ZOHRAN MAMDANI’S TERRORIST FRIENDS OF FRIENDS. Last week, Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani visited a mosque in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood. Mamdani, who if elected would be New York’s first Muslim mayor, extravagantly praised the imam at the mosque, Siraj Wahhaj.
“Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had the pleasure of meeting with Imam Siraj Wahhaj,” Mamdani tweeted, calling him “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century.” Altogether, the visit was, Mamdani said, “a beautiful Jummah,” referring to the Friday prayer service.
Was the event significant? After all, Mamdani has planned his campaign building on the support of the nearly 1 million Muslims who live in New York City, an estimated 350,000 of whom are registered to vote. He has visited a lot of mosques and Muslim community centers.
The Masjid at Taqwa event was notable because of Mamdani’s warm connection to Imam Wahhaj. Shortly after the visit, social media erupted with reports that Wahhaj had been an unindicted coconspirator in the Feb. 26, 1993, World Trade Center bombing, the first attempt by Islamic terrorists to bring down the iconic building. Then it turned out Wahhaj has refused to condemn Osama bin Laden, the Islamic terrorist who directed the second, tragically successful, attack on the World Trade Center on Sept. 11, 2001. In short, Imam Wahhaj has a notable relationship to terrorism, one that Mamdani either did not know or did not care about during last week’s visit.
The following information comes from the 2006 book American Islam: The Struggle for the Soul of a Religion by journalist and professor Paul Barrett. Barrett described Wahhaj’s life from his birth as Jeffrey Kearse in Brooklyn in 1950, to college at New York University, to joining the Nation of Islam, to changing his name to Jeffrey 12X, to spending time at Louis Farrakhan’s mosque, and eventually to winning Farrakhan’s backing to become a minister.
After the death of Nation of Islam founder Elijah Muhammad, Wahhaj moved toward traditional Sunni Islam, eventually leaving the Nation. In 1981 he founded Masjid At Taqwa. He preached personal responsibility and, in his words, “that an Islamic society, in which adulterers face stoning and thieves have their hands cut off, would be superior to American democracy.”
Wahhaj grew in influence — and notoriety. “During the late 1980s and early 1990s the mosque opened its doors to significant players on the militant Muslim scene,” writes Barrett. After war against the Soviets in Afghanistan, the book continues, “Some militant Muslims were now fixing their sights on the United States as another infidel empire that needed to be taught a bloody lesson. A circle of men eager for global jihad formed in the New York area. For religious guidance, they looked to Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind Egyptian sheikh.” Abdel-Rahman, who provided the religious justification for the assassination of Egyptian President Anwar el Sadat, visited Imam Wahhaj’s mosque. So did another radical, an American named Clement Rodney Hampton-El.
In February 1993 came the World Trade Center bombing, which was part of a plan to attack other prominent targets in New York. “The FBI investigation led to charges not only against the four men responsible for [the World Trade Center] attack … but also a larger network of followers of Sheikh Abdel-Rahman,” Barrett writes. “The U.S. government prosecuted the blind cleric and ten of his devotees for the broader conspiracy to bomb the United Nations Building and other landmarks in the city. The FBI figured out that two members of the conspiracy had ties to Masjid At-Taqwa: Clement Rodney Hampton-El and the blind sheikh, who had lectured at the mosque. In February 1995 the government sent a letter to defense lawyers in the landmarks conspiracy case that disclosed a list of 170 people, including Wahhaj, whom prosecutors said they might name as co-conspirators. Wahhaj was never indicted.”
Several months later, Imam Wahhaj testified on behalf of the blind sheikh in the trial for conspiracy to bomb the landmarks. This is more from American Islam:
Without apology, [Wahhaj] testified that he had met Sheikh Abdel-Rahman several times and that it had been an honor to host the cleric at Taqwa. He described the blind sheikh as a “respected scholar,” known for having memorized the entire Quran. “He is bold, as a strong preacher of Islam, so is respected that way,” Wahhaj testified. In fact, court records reveal the sheikh as a preacher of virulent hatred for the United States. In one speech, not at Taqwa, he instructed followers, “Do jihad with the sword, with the cannon, with the grenades, with the missile.”
In his court testimony Wahhaj called Hampton-El “one of the most respected brothers.” He added, “You always see him sitting around talking to someone, some youth, giving advice, even some imam, head of the Muslim communities, giving advice.” Prosecutors presented evidence that Hampton-El provided assistance to the bombing plot by seeking to provide detonators and “clean” guns that couldn’t be traced.
Wahhaj testified that he had met a third defendant, Siddig Ibrahim Siddig Ali, and that he had a favorable impression of a fourth, Ibrahim El-Gabrowny. All four of the defendants the imam discussed on the witness stand were convicted and sentenced to prison terms.
So it turned out that Imam Wahhaj knew four of the defendants convicted, and he thought they were all good guys. When author Barrett asked Wahhaj about it, “He suggested that there had been a government plot to trap Abdel-Rahman and his followers.” Wahhaj said, “We saw Sheikh Abdel-Rahman as a man of principle. The other part that the government brought, we don’t know about this. We don’t know about him planning — and still are not convinced about that — planning to blow up, inspiring people to blow up.”
Another man Wahhaj refuses to speak ill of is Osama bin Laden, who of course masterminded the 9/11 attacks. “Wahhaj denounces terrorism, but he takes great pains to remain neutral about Osama bin Laden,” Barrett writes. “In one of a series of interviews he told me that the al Qaeda leader’s videotaped boasts about the attacks may have been a media ruse, doctored videotape, perhaps, or even a performance staged by American-backed operatives. ‘I’m just not so sure I want to be one of the ones who say, ‘Yea, he did it. He’s a horrible man,’ Wahhaj explained.”
MAMDANI POSES IN CAMPAIGN PHOTO WITH ’93 WTC BOMBING UNINDICTED CO-CONSPIRATOR
So that is Imam Wahhaj, the man Zohran Mamdani praised so fulsomely at the Taqwa mosque. Of course, some opponents of Mamdani made a big deal of Wahhaj’s history. But Mamdani’s defenders, including some in the press, argued that the “unindicted co-conspirator” accusation was an exaggeration. The New York Times reported that “the list Mr. Wahhaj appeared on was criticized by some former terrorism prosecutors as being overly broad.”
Try this. Reread the above description of Imam Wahhaj’s statements and actions and ask whether, in terms of assessing Mamdani’s associations, it really matters whether he was an unindicted coconspirator or not. Wahhaj was certainly a follower and supporter of the blind sheikh. He thought well of other, real conspirators. He won’t even say Osama bin Laden was a bad man, for God’s sake. Doesn’t that tell the world something about Mamdani’s values and associations?
