The final elected choice for mayor of New York is months away, but the reverberations of the recent Democratic primary victory of Zohran Mamdani for the position spread far and wide.
As Mamdani is a pro-Islamist Muslim Brotherhood sympathizer, it is urgent to examine what the possibilities are not just for New York, but for the U.S. and its allies and observers throughout the Middle East and the world.
As a Muslim and openly critical anti-Islamist, I understand what the powerful messages contained in Mamdani’s actions and statements can do to induce antisemitism and terrorism. History offers global lessons of its implications and outcomes.
In Israel’s war against Hamas, complicated by the recent pining for a renewed cease-fire, virulent Islamist literature was seized from the Hamas commandos indoctrinated to perform the appalling atrocities of October . Islamism encompasses the most lethal genocidal antisemitism known to modern man- infusing Nazi antisemitism with a political totalitarianism religionized as creed.
Islamist sentiments are defining hallmark in recent and ongoing pro-Palestinian protests around the world. The term, “Globalize the Intifada,” that Mamdani has invoked, is an explicit call of Islamist extremist terror groups around the globe. It endangers Jews – and those who defend them–including American Jews, under the guise of promoting pro-Palestinian rights.
There were two previous Intifadas in Israel (the first from 1987 to 1990; the second from 2000-2005). Each was defined by the rise of violent Islamist terrorism and Palestinian suicide bombings claiming hundreds of lives of both Israelis and Palestinians, and injuring thousands.
Calling for the globalization of the Intifada is calling for global terrorism to target innocent civilians across the world on the basis of their religion and identity. It also seeks to destabilize some of the most secular pluralistic democracies in the world.
The fight against Islamism is also ongoing and robust.
The most emphatic rejection of Islamism comes from the Muslim Majority world when in 2013 over 95 million Egyptian Muslims rejected Muslim Brotherhood leader President Mohammed Morsi. They overthrew him after his election to power as his Islamist totalitarianism became clear.
Muslims in Saudi Arabia– the epicenter of Islam and where I once made my home– have systematically expelled Islamism, Islamist literature and Islamist education from the Saudi Kingdom. They declared it unlawful, promoting terror and fundamentally antithetical to Islam.
Islamist literature is considered so dangerous and inflammatory there that it is now guarded in a special reference library at The Intellectual Warfare Center in the Saudi Ministry of Defense.
Similarly, in France, the recently declassified report – published in Le Figaro—that the French government commissioned on the operation of the Muslim Brotherhood within France– has revealed a staggering influence and extremely sophisticated operation.
The Muslim Brotherhood in France is involved with hundreds of non-governmental operations (NGO’s) exercising huge influence over schools, colleges, local government, local politicians, such that Islamist liberalism has gained a strong footprint over the French republic.
The report makes a very important observation that Muslim Brotherhood operatives are exceptionally gifted at exploiting local politics and pressuring local politicians corralling local voters bases and imposing their anti-democratic pro-Islamists positions and undermining cohesion.
Examples include religious policing, Ramadan policing and forcing dominance over the public space in favor of Islamist versions of Islamic expression. This has resulted in the mandated veiling of underage girls and intimidation not only of the Muslim community, but also the non-Muslim community.
Rising Islamist antisemitism is a big part of this. This is why New Yorkers and all Americans need to be concerned.
Investigative reporter and anti-Islamist American Muslim Asra Nomani has detailed the decades long political machine and flow of money that underpins socialist Muslim candidates like Mamdani and their campaigns taking over the mainstream Democratic party. Islamists and their sympathizers including the Islamogauchists –as France refers to them– are playing the long game.
Research shows that central to all Islamism is a cosmic, not merely mortal, enmity with the Jewish state, the Jewish people and Global Jewry. Exporting this jihad as Islamists perceive it is inscribed in the Iranian constitution and central tenet to all Islamist groups. All Islamist violence is based first on strategic nonviolent political totalitarianism Islamism.
The reticence of the U.S. political establishment, and many in American media in seeking to challenge and expose Mamdani’s hard-core pro Islamist sentiments, and policies does not surprise.
The Muslim Brotherhood is greatly empowered in their alliances and they are expert and savvy at manipulating social justice issues, and presenting themselves as palatable Democrats when in fact, they seek authoritarianism illiberalism.
Their political footprint has long been documented. They are increasingly impacting local politics as recent experiences in Texas indicate and seeking to create enclaves in local housing, local schooling and at least in one state (also Texas) attempt to influence divorce proceedings all in favor of an Islamist slant.
Certainly, some may say this alarmist projection of the ideology of one mayoral candidate is extreme. But there is precedence around the world for the growth of extreme Islamists.
We cannot let this happen here.
Dr. Qanta A. Ahmed MD, Senior Fellow Independent Women’s Forum; Life Member, Council on Foreign Relations; Author; “In the Land of Invisible Women: A Female Doctor’s Journey in the Saudi Kingdom”
