But, beaming in a photograph taken on a city sidewalk, Sarsour appeared unfazed, her iconic fist pumped in the air as she knelt shoulder-to-shoulder with campaign volunteers for City Council candidate Khader El-Yateem. The photo was posted by El-Yateem on the Facebook page he used to promote his campaign, which he lost, but among the smiling faces was a young organizer named\u00a0Zohran Mamdani<\/a>.<\/p>\n In late September 2017, Palestinian American pastor Khader El-Yateem shared a photo of his campaign team from his bid to be elected to New York’s City Council from Brooklyn’s District 43. Palestinian American political organizer Linda Sarsour (far left, front row) took a knee with Zohran Mamdani (fourth from right, white shirt). El-Yattem lost the race. (@Khader El-Yateem\/Facebook)<\/p>\n That photo would mark the start of a carefully constructed political project that, in less than a decade, would propel a now-34-year-old socialist newcomer to the precipice of running America\u2019s largest city \u2013 even while campaigning with radical imams, some of whom have supported terrorists and terrorist financiers.<\/p>\n A Fox Digital investigation reveals that Mamdani\u2019s rise was no accident. It was engineered.<\/p>\n SEN. SLOTKIN SAYS DEM SOCIALIST NYC CANDIDATE MAMDANI REPRESENTS ‘NEW GENERATION’ OF LEADERS YOUNG VOTERS WANT<\/a><\/p>\n Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a mayoral debate, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo\/Angelina Katsanis, Pool)<\/p>\n A\u00a0database<\/a>\u00a0of 110 groups backing Mamdani exposes a tight inner circle of organizations that identify as Muslim or socialist, working hand-in-glove with 76 Democratic Party affiliates, allied groups and unions. Particularly important in this\u00a0political machine\u00a0are two networks \u2013 Sarsour\u2019s MPower organizations and another constellation of groups called Emgage, with which she\u00a0works closely<\/a>.<\/p>\n The organizations have been generously funded. In total, billionaire George Soros\u2019 Open Society philanthropies have given MPower and Emgage nearly $2.5 million in recent years, according to tax filings.\u00a0<\/p>\n “#MyMuslimVote Organizing Summit” with Zohran Mamdani, then the Democratic nominee for the 36th District to New York’s General Assembly, Women’s March cofounder Tamika Mallory and former Michigan gubernatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed. El-Sayed. (\u00a0MPower Change\/email)<\/p>\n “We fund a range of civil society organizations that\u00a0work to deepen civic engagement through peaceful democratic participation, counter discrimination including against Muslim Americans and advance human rights,” a spokesperson for Open Society Foundations told Fox News Digital. “The grants that you cite all occurred years before the mayoral race, and we are a nonpartisan organization that does not fund political candidates and their campaigns.”<\/p>\n Mamdani, Sarsour and the groups supporting Mamdani’s campaign didn’t return requests for comment.<\/p>\n MPower and Emgage have been part of a tight inner circle of 30 ethnic and religious groups, that also includes\u00a0<\/a>CAIR Action<\/a>, the 501(c)(4) political wing of the 501(c)(3) Council on American-Islamic Relations nonprofit,\u00a0the Islamic Circle of North America<\/a>,“<\/a>\u00a0“Muslim Action Coalition,”<\/a>\u00a0Yemeni American Merchants Associations Inc.<\/a>, the\u00a0“Bangladeshi American Advocacy Group”<\/a> and\u00a0“Desis Rising Up and Moving.”<\/a> They have pumped up Mamdani\u2019s campaign with\u00a0social media campaigns<\/a>,\u00a0canvassing<\/a>,\u00a0voters<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0buzz<\/a>.<\/p>\n Altogether, they have annual revenues of about $24 million, and they have worked to promote Mamdani\u2019s campaign with\u00a0endorsements<\/a>,\u00a0fund-raising,\u00a0social media campaigns<\/a> and\u00a0canvassing<\/a>.<\/p>\n The result: a carefully constructed political career that mainstreams the socialist goals\u00a0long embraced by Sarsour<\/a> and fellow members of the Democratic Socialists of America.<\/p>\n It\u2019s a machine that is 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 Party to propel candidates who may share their views. In a campaign called\u00a0“Defend and Advance,”<\/a>\u00a0Emgage SuperPac is pushing Mamdani and Democratic Virginia Lt. Governor candidate Ghazala Hashmi<\/a>\u00a0as its “star candidates.”<\/p>\n Emgage\u2019s “Defend and Advance” roster of supported candidates and office holders includes Dearborn, Mich., Mayor Abdullah Hammoud.<\/p>\n “I want you to know as mayor, you are not welcome here,” Hammoud recently told a\u00a0Christian pastor who objected to a proposal to name a street in honor of a local man<\/a> who had allegedly praised terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah. “And the day you move out of the city will be the day that I launch a parade celebrating the fact that you moved out of the city because you are not somebody who believes in coexistence.”<\/p>\n Emgage\u2019s donations include $175,000 from a group little-noticed by political observers but important in Islamist circles:\u00a0Sterling Charitable Gift Fund<\/a>, based in Herndon, Va. It is part of a\u00a0network of groups that FBI agents raided<\/a> in 2002 as part of wider investigations into the funding of Palestinian terrorist groups, including Hamas. Federal prosecutors ultimately didn\u2019t file criminal charges against any officials at Sterling Charitable Gift Fund.<\/p>\n MEET MAMDANI’S RADICAL ADVISORY CIRCLE THAT INCLUDES COMMUNIST ACTIVIST, ANTI-ISRAEL ADVOCATES<\/a><\/p>\n Hungarian-born U.S. investor and philanthropist George Soros smiles after delivering a speech on the sidelines of the World Economic Forum (WEF) annual meeting in Davos on May 24, 2022. (FABRICE COFFRINI\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/p>\n Over almost a decade, Sarsour and her allies have orchestrated a network of well-financed and tightly connected socialist activists, radical imams, political organizers and nonprofit organizations funded with millions of dollars by major philanthropies, including Foundation to Promote Open Society, the Ford Foundation, Macarthur Foundation and the Tides Foundation.<\/p>\n The confluence of big philanthropy, partisan operatives and clerical authority has helped drive Mamdani\u2019s ascent. Its architecture combines nonprofit activism with faith-based politics and the precision of a professional campaign operation.\u00a0<\/p>\n “To the casual observer, Zohran Mamdani\u2019s rise might appear meteoric \u2013 a story of grassroots energy and demographic change in America\u2019s largest city,” said Dalia Al-Aqidi, an Iraqi American Muslim who is running against Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar\u00a0in Minnesota, with Omar supported by the same kind of political machine being unleashed to propel Mamdani to office.<\/p>\n “The data, the money trail and the affiliations, from the Democratic Socialists of America to the Islamists, tells a different story.”<\/p>\n “Mamdani\u2019s ascent is the product of deliberate design: a sophisticated collaboration between socialist activism and Islamist organizing, lubricated by millions in foundation grants and political donations and normalized through 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 said.<\/p>\n The timeline of Mamdani\u2019s rise tracks precisely with the growth of this network. In 2012, as a student at Bowdoin College, in Maine, he\u00a0cofounded<\/a> a chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine, the campus organization known for its rabid anti-Israel activism. By 2017, he was canvassing for El-Yateem\u2019s campaign with Sarsour\u2019s mentorship.<\/p>\n Activist Linda Sarsour, shown here at a demonstration in Manhattan’s Foley Square, was an early backer of Mamdani’s political aspirations. (Photo by Erik McGregor\/LightRocket via Getty Images)<\/p>\n In 2018, Mamdani formally entered Sarsour\u2019s orbit through the\u00a0Muslim Democratic Club of New York<\/a>, an organization she co-founded in 2013 to mobilize Muslim voters and elect progressive Democrats to local office. The Muslim Democratic Club of New York served as both incubator and amplifier for Sarsour\u2019s political brand, one that fused progressive politics with an explicitly Islamist social identity. By December 2018, Mamdani joined the board, in an\u00a0announcement<\/a> in which the group said, “Help build Muslim power across the city with us!”<\/p>\n UNEARTHED VIDEO EXPOSES MAMDANI’S ‘UNABASHED’ COMMITMENT TO SUPPORTING ANTI-ISRAEL SANCTIONS AS LAWMAKER<\/a><\/p>\n Democratic mayoral nominee Zohran Mamdani supporters gather outside 30 Rock in New York City on Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025.\u00a0 (Fox News Digital\/Deirdre Heavey)<\/p>\n With his new role, Mamdani gained access to an emerging infrastructure of influence: voter lists, donor networks and organizing muscle that would later power his campaign to a seat on the New York General Assembly. The Muslim Democratic Club endorsed Mamdani.<\/p>\n Around that time, Sarsour was building her own empire, founding MPower Change as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit housed at Neo Philanthropy Inc. Public filings show MPower Change took in at least $2.4 million between 2017 and 2024, the latest year available, with Soros\u2019s Foundation to Promote Open Society giving her<\/a> organization $1.125 million and the Macarthur Foundation funneling her $450,000. It would become a flagship digital organizing hub for not just Sarsour but Mamdani.\u00a0<\/p>\n Meanwhile, Emgage Action was expanding its footprint nationally. Also backed by the Open Society network, Emgage Action received a share of $42.5 million that Soros’ foundations pledged to Muslim, Arab and South Asian civic groups beginning in 2021. It has received $1.8 million from the Open Society Policy Center and another $1.35 million from the Foundation to Promote Open Society.<\/p>\n Together, MPower Change and Emgage created an unprecedented financial and political ecosystem, leveraging big philanthropy\u2019s dollars and digital strategy to elevate candidates like Mamdani under the banner of Muslim empowerment.<\/p>\n In 2020, Mamdani won his first election<\/a> to the New York State Assembly, with Sarsour\u2019s explicit endorsement and fundraising help.<\/p>\n By 2020, Mamdani was being featured in Sarsour\u2019s #MyMuslimVote summit, promoted by MPower Change as the face of a new generation of unapologetic Muslim progressives. By this year, his campaign for mayor became the culmination of that project \u2014 backed by PAC money, boosted by clerical endorsements and legitimized by an activist ecosystem that had spent a decade grooming him for this very moment.<\/p>\n REP. ELISE STEFANIK LABELS NYC MAYORAL CANDIDATE ZOHRAN MAMDANI A ‘JIHADIST’<\/a><\/p>\n New York City Democratic mayoral nominee, Zohran Mamdani, spoke to supporters at a canvass launch event in Prospect Park on Sunday, Aug. 17, 2025.\u00a0 (Deirdre Heavey\/Fox News Digital)<\/p>\n To push Mamdani toward the helm of the nation\u2019s biggest city, the network extended far beyond activist circles. Central to Mamdani\u2019s political ascent was a series of carefully cultivated relationships with clerics with some troubling views.<\/p>\n In January, Mamdani courted Imam Muhammad Al-Barr of the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, visiting his mosque just months after Al-Barr had\u00a0publicly prayed to “annihilate” Israel<\/a>.<\/p>\n In May, Imam Siraj Wahhaj, the longtime imam of Brooklyn\u2019s Masjid At-Taqwa, personally donated $1,000 to the Unity and Justice Fund. More recently, Mamdani met with Wahhaj and called him “one of the nation\u2019s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community.”<\/p>\n Wahhaj, who served as a character witness in the trial of\u00a0Omar Abdel-Rahman, the “Blind Sheikh” later convicted of masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, has a long history of calling for the exploitation of America\u2019s democracy to further a conquest for Islam.<\/p>\n “You don’t get in politics because it’s the American thing to do,” he said in a\u00a0videotaped 1991 sermon<\/a>. “You get involved in politics because politics can be a weapon to use in the cause of Islam.”\u00a0<\/p>\n Wahhaj has\u00a0also\u00a0denounced<\/a>\u00a0the U.S. government as “controlled by Shaitan,” the Arabic word for the devil, urged Muslims not to befriend “non-believers,” condemned homosexuality as “a disease of this society,” and supported Islamic laws that punish sex outside of marriage with 100 lashes and stoning.\u00a0In 2011, Wahhaj\u00a0urged<\/a>\u00a0Muslims to donate to the\u00a0legal defense of the since-convicted Aafia Siddiqui<\/a>, a Pakistani neuroscientist dubbed “Lady Al Qaeda” for attempting to kill U.S. troops in Afghanistan.<\/p>\n Over the years, Wahhaj\u2019s sermons have praised\u00a0“jihad” without “a gun,”\u00a0called for an Islamic America governed by sharia law and\u00a0urged the creation of an “army of 10,000 men in New York City<\/a>.”<\/p>\n Other imams now backing Mamdani\u2019s mayoral run have also been controversial. Imam Talib Abdur-Rashid, a cleric leading the Mosque of Islamic Brotherhood in Harlem, co-founded the Muslim Alliance in North America, alongside Wahhaj. In 2005, Abdur-Rashid\u00a0publicly defended Rafiq Sabir<\/a>, an American doctor who joined al Qaeda and was subsequently sentenced to 25 years in prison.<\/p>\n DNC EMBRACES SOCIALIST MAMDANI AS RESURFACED ANTI-ISRAEL REMARKS RAISE ALARM: ‘BIG TENT PARTY’<\/a><\/p>\n Independent candidate and former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo, left, speaks during a mayoral debate with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa, center, and Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, Thursday, Oct. 16, 2025, in New York City. (AP Photo\/Angelina Katsanis, Pool)<\/p>\n In 2008, Abdur-Rashid defended Sami Al-Arian, a Palestinian American professor whom the U.S. later\u00a0deported\u00a0to Turkey for\u00a0“conspiring to provide services<\/a>” to Palestinian Islamic Jihad. Still in the U.S., Al-Arian\u2019s wife\u00a0joined\u00a0the anti-Israel encampments at Columbia University.<\/p>\n In September, Mamdani\u00a0appeared<\/a> as the special guest speaker at Abdur-Rashid\u2019s annual gala. A month earlier, Muslim Association of North America\u2019s social media featured Abdur-Rashid visiting Wahhaj\u2019s mosque, underscoring the continued collaboration between the two imams.<\/p>\n In Manhattan, Imam Khalid Latif, the executive director of the Islamic Center at New York University, has been another prominent Mamdani backer. Latif publicly endorsed Mamdani on Facebook in June, calling him “a bearer of compassion in a time where it is far too rare.”<\/p>\n In 2012, Latif\u00a0led a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia that included Omar Mateen<\/a>, who would later murder 49 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, the deadliest anti-LGBTQ attack in U.S. history. He has denied radicalizing Mateen and he hasn\u2019t faced the same type of allegations that surround the other imams.<\/p>\n Zohran Mamdani meets Imam Siraj Wahhaj and Yusef Abdus Salaam on Oct. 17, 2025. (@ZohranKMamdani\/X)<\/p>\n For many Muslim political organizations backing Mamdani, these clerics are not liabilities but assets, serving as trusted gatekeepers to the city\u2019s growing community of Muslim voters.<\/p>\n After Mamdani visited Wahhaj\u2019s mosque earlier this month, he\u00a0tweeted out a photo of the two<\/a> with the caption: “Pleasure to meet Imam Siraj Wahhaj, one of the nation\u2019s foremost Muslim leaders.” When a firestorm ensued,\u00a0several allies rose to his defense: Sarsour, the Council on American-Islamic Relations and the leaders at Emgage Action.<\/p>\n![\"In](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/yateem_pic.jpg\")
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