Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani is close to a religious leader known for planting bombs.

The Democratic candidate for New York City mayor, Zohran Mamdani, found himself at the center of controversy after posting a photograph in which he appears smiling and arm in arm with Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an Islamist preacher identified by the FBI as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Mamdani himself shared the image on X during a campaign visit to Masjid At-Taqwa, a mosque located in Brooklyn. “Today I had the pleasure of meeting Imam Siraj Wahhaj, a pillar of the Bed-Stuy community for nearly half a century,” wrote the candidate, without mentioning his host's controversial past.

Who is Siraj Wahhaj?

Wahhaj was included on the list of co-conspirators in the 1993 terrorist attack against the World Trade Center, in which six people were killed and more than a thousand were injured.

Although he was never convicted, he appears in the court documents of the case and even testified in defense of the “blind sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman, leader of the extremist group responsible for the attack.

Local analysts emphasized that Mamdani is part of the most radical wing of the Democratic Party, linked to the “Democratic Socialists of America” (DSA) movement, which promotes socialist-style economic reforms, confiscatory taxes, and a foreign policy hostile toward Israel.

The Mamdani case reflects a global trend of contemporary left-wing politics: the alliance between “progressive” discourse and figures or regimes of questionable democratic reputation. From Latin American Chavismo to political Islamism.

At a time when the West seeks to reaffirm its values, the left continues to demonstrate the emptiness of the discourses it keeps.