I waited for the noise around Zohran Mamdani, the online shouting match that swung between defaming him and glorifying him, to quiet down a little before weighing in.
Mamdani built his brand on grievance: the persecuted Muslim immigrant standing up to the big, bad West. But scratch the surface, and the story falls apart.
To begin with, Mamdani is an Aga Khani Ismaili — a small sect that follows a living Imam and whose interpretations of the Quran most Sunnis and Shias consider heretical. That’s what makes his rise so ironic: a man from a sect rejected by mainstream Islam has become the West’s go-to “Muslim voice,” the self-appointed representative of a faith that doesn’t even recognize him. Though he describes himself as a Twelver.
During his campaign, Mamdani leaned hard on identity politics. Outside a Bronx mosque, he invoked “the memory of my aunt,” who supposedly stopped taking the subway after 9/11 because she feared for her safety in a hijab. Except it wasn’t true.
Records show Mamdani has three aunts, two Hindu, and one Muslim who lived in Tanzania between 2000 and 2003. She never wore a hijab and wasn’t in New York before, during, or after 9/11.
There’s a clear pattern: Mamdani weaponizes the language of oppression, Islamophobia, colonialism, white supremacy, to build power, then turns it into a tool of moral absolutism once he’s there.
Ironically, he also pulled 32% of New York’s Jewish vote (compared to Republican Curtis Sliwa’s 5%). The real danger isn’t his faith or even accusations of antisemitism, it’s his ideology. A socialist revolutionary in activist clothing, a far-left ideologue wrapped in the myth of persecution.
Mamdani’s rhetoric carries echoes of old Ba’athist language, that intoxicating blend of nationalism, socialism, and moral authoritarianism that once ruled the Arab world. If the Ba’athists were still around, they’d be applauding. Saddam would be smiling in hell.