Councilman Yusef Salaam, Zohran Mamdani and Siraj Wahhaj
New Delhi: An investigation by Freedom Centre Investigates claims that New York City has experienced a 243% surge in Islamic terrorist attacks and plots over the last two and a half years, alleging a direct connection between this rise and the ascension of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s political network.
According to the report, three out of four Islamic terrorist plots targeting New York City over the past three years occurred following Mamdani’s election victory, marking what critics are labelling the “Mamdani Effect.” The analysis points out that in the seven months since Mamdani took office, New York City has already experienced two executed Islamic terror attacks.
The first involved two Muslim teenagers throwing homemade bombs during a protest rally against Islamization directly outside the mayoral residence at Gracie Mansion. The second involved a mass stabbing in Manhattan carried out by an ex-convict shouting “Allahu Akbar.”
The report contrasts the executed attacks under Mamdani with earlier foiled plots. On December 31, 2025, Christian Sturdivant, a convert to Islam, was arrested over a New Year’s Eve stabbing spree plot in New York City. Had it been executed, the attack would have taken place just hours before Mamdani assumed office. Prior to his arrest, Sturdivant had posted online, “May Allah curse the cross worshipers.”
Additionally, on October 7, 2024, Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a Pakistani Muslim operating out of Canada, plotted to mark the anniversary of the Hamas atrocities with a terror attack directed against Jewish synagogues in Brooklyn. The report emphasises that both of these religiously themed Muslim attacks, one targeting Jews and the other targeting Christians, were previously once-a-year occurrences where the plans remained unexecuted.
In contrast, two separate attacks have already been carried out within the first seven months of Mamdani’s tenure, with expectations of possibly more to come before his first year ends. Furthermore, the report emphasises that the Muslim terror plots in 2024 and 2025 remained plans and were not executed, while the two attacks under Mamdani were.
To contextualise this trend, the report notes that a successfully implemented Muslim attack in the city had not occurred since 2022. Furthermore, to find a year with two distinct Muslim terror attacks, data goes back to 2017. During that record year, Sayfullo Saipov, an Uzbek Muslim who entered the country via a Diversity Immigrant Lottery visa, rammed his vehicle into pedestrians in Manhattan, killing eight people and wounding 13. That same year, Akayed Ullah, a Bangladeshi Muslim whose uncle had also won a Diversity Immigrant Lottery visa, attempted to detonate a pipe bomb inside the New York City subway.
The report states that 2017 represented a peak because after years of coddling ISIS under Obama, the Trump administration had unleashed a ruthless campaign that broke the terror group, leading to a wave of global attacks by Muslims supporting the organisation they believed had been chosen by Allah to destroy non-Muslims and usher in a new Caliphate.
However, with no global events that should have led to a similar wave of Sunni attacks in 2026, and while Islamic terrorists continue to carry out attacks without a significant global surge, the report asserts that the 243 per cent increase in New York City’s terror activity cannot be attributed to broader global trends, leaving local political shifts in New York City as the primary variable.
Freedom Centre Investigates previously documented Mamdani’s ties to terrorism, including his visit to the Al-Taqwa Mosque, a site previously under NYPD surveillance, where he embraced its religious leader, Imam Siraj Wahhaj. Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the World Trade Centre bombing, previously called America “filthy,” preached “I will never ever tell people, ‘don’t be violent, that is not the Islamic way.’
The violence has to be selected,” and declared that getting involved in “politics is a weapon in the cause of Islam.” Wahhaj’s son was later charged in a terrorism plot. Mamdani had also joined prayers at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge, where an imam had been caught on video praying for victory for Hamas, imploring “Allah to make them strong and guide their shooting.”
The report further alleges that Mamdani has repeatedly spoken out to excuse and cover for Islamic terrorists on social media. Critiques extend to Mamdani’s transition team and staff, which included multiple terror lawyers. These include Mamdani’s Chief Counsel, Ramzi Kassem, who had claimed that 9/11 was due to the “resentment these terrorists felt towards the United States” as a result of “our country’s policies” and argued that “terrorism is but one of many reactions to oppression and dispossession and not their cause.” In Lebanon, Kassem had boasted about throwing stones at Israelis.
Other figures linked to Mamdani’s rise were highlighted to question if the 243 per cent increase in Islamic terrorist attacks in New York City can really be connected to anything other than the rise of a political network openly supportive of Islamic terrorism. Among these figures is Linda Sarsour, described as Mamdani’s political guru, who had bragged, “I would be honored to die a martyr,” and, as the Middle East Forum noted, was involved in an organisation a Hamas front group had tried to direct funds to. Additionally, Aber Kawas, Mamdani’s first endorsement and now the Democrat nominee for state senate, had described an Al Qaeda terrorist and Hamas fundraisers as “imprisoned heroes” and called another Muslim terrorist who plotted to bomb a synagogue as “my brother.”
The report expands its scope across the river to address broader regional political dynamics. Across the river, Democrats have nominated Hisham ‘Adam’ Hamawy as a congressional candidate, even though he had translated for and testified for the ‘Blind Sheikh’ linked to the World Trade Centre bombing and subsequent Islamic terror plots against New York City, and even though he had volunteered for an Al Qaeda-linked group.
The report concludes that the growing political power of the Islamic terror lobby is naturally leading to a surge in Islamic terror violence. It argues that the mobs waving Hamas and Hezbollah flags in the streets of New York City are normalising Islamic terrorism, asserting that the more it is normalised, the more of it there will be. According to the investigation, Mamdani is a symptom of how the political support for Islamic terrorism among New York and New Jersey Democrats is translating into more Islamic terrorism in the region, warning that the more power that the political supporters of Islamic terrorism get, the worse the terrorist attacks will become.
