Anti-Israel sermons in mosques: Does New York’s next mayor find them offensive?

Following a recent anti-Israel/antisemitic rally of blustering, keffiyeh-brandishing, placard-hoisting men and women outside a prominent synagogue on the Upper East Side of Manhattan while an aliyah-supporting conference was taking place inside, New York City’s next mayor, Zohran Mamdani, according to his press secretary, “discouraged the language” – including shouted obscenities, and “Death to the IDF” – used by the protestors, who were brought together by the Palestinian Assembly for Liberation. Mamdani, his aide said, “believes every New Yorker should be free to enter a house of worship without intimidation.”

Very nice – as far as Mamdani’s sentiments went.

But they went further. The mayor-elect also took the synagogue to task for sponsoring an activity, organized by Nefesh B’Nefesh, which encouraged Jews to move to Israel. Nefesh B’Nefesh, he said, was “promoting activities in violation of international law.” He called the gathering in Park East Synagogue an inappropriate use of “sacred space.”

He did not specify which international law was being violated. He did not specify if living in the land of Israel is illegal, or only moving there. He did not indicate if G-d, when He instructed Abram and Sarai to go to Canaan, was also in violation of international law.

Mamdani’s public record – and his actions during his successful mayoral campaign, which included visiting a mosque in Brooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood whose imam had been named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and visiting another mosque in Brooklyn, whose imam had recently called for the annihilation of Israel – has naturally raised suspicion about Mamdani’s good intentions in many parts of the Jewish community.

Since Mamdani, an out-and-proud Muslim with a long record of anti-Zionist statements and activities, was kind enough to inform the Jewish community what sort of behavior does not belong in a Jewish house of worship, he will surely appreciate advice on what sort of statements or actions are not appropriate in one of his own religion.

Here are some relevant examples from recent years, all fully documented – though monitoring organizations do not always publish the identity of Islamic leaders whose remarks are critical of Israel and the United States — that have taken place in mosques around the world (we await his forthcoming thanks for this effort, as well as his condemnation of mosque-based actions):

• In Davis, California, Imam Ammar Shahin said Islam’s “judgment day will not come until the Muslims fight the Jews, and the Jews hide behind stones and trees, and the stones and trees” give away the Jews’ hiding places.
• Mohamed Tatai, rector of the Great Mosque of Toulouse, France, in a sermon cited the same Koranic text about Allah killing Jews who are hiding.
• Sheikh Mahmoud Harmoush preached at the Islamic Center in Riverside, California, that the Jews had a plan to take over Palestine “with killing and crimes and massacres.”
• In an east London mosque, an unnamed imam called for the destruction of Jewish homes and called on Allah to “curse the Jews and the children of Israel.”
• Sheikh Abdulrahman al-Sudais of the Grand Mosque in Mecca prayed to God to “keep the al-Aqsa mosque [on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount] … keep them [Muslims] from the attackers Zionists, the occupying combatant brutes.”
• Sheikh Salah al-Badir of the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina called on God to “liberate the al-Aqsa mosque from the usurper Jews and the traitorous occupying Zionists … quake them and destroy them.”
• Sheikh Saleh bin Humaid, a top religious figure in Saudi Arabia, said at the Grand Mosque in Mecca that God should “cleanse the al-Aqsa mosque from the filth of the occupier Zionists.”
• Imam Abdelmohsen Aboulhatab of the Al-Aqsa Islamic Society in Philadelphia called Jews “the vilest people” and Israeli officials “the enemies of Allah,” and accused the “nefarious’ Jewish media of causing people to see Muslims as “oppressive and predatory lions.”
• Imam Hasan Sabri of the Islamic Center of South Florida, alleging that Israel was created on stolen Muslim territory, stated that “Palestine in its entirety is Islamic land, and there is no difference between what was occupied in 1948 [when Israel won its war of independence] and 1967 [when Israel won the Six-Day War and took over land from Egypt, Syria and Jordan].”
• Fadi Kablawi, a dentist who serves as imam at Masjid As Sunnah An Nahawiyyah in North Miami, called Israeli soldiers “worse than Nazis,” and said he prayed to “annihilate” Jews. He said Israel aid organizations had used the 2010 Haiti earthquake as a cover to harvest Haitians’ organs. “All that is because there is no God for these people.”
• At a mosque in Fort Lauderdale a sermon by an unnamed imam included the accusation that Jews, who have “orchestrated everything against the Muslims … are always injecting the poison inside the [non-Jewish] communities to affect them.”
• A guest imam at the Islamic Center of Rockland County (New York State), Ned Muhammad Nadal, praised Hamas as “the people of Allah” who would not be defeated by the armies of Israel or Western countries.
• Sheikh Ahmed Zoud of the Masjid as-Sunnah Lakemba in Sydney, Australia, called Jews “monsters” who “ran like rats” when Hamas conducted its bloody October 7 terrorist attack. “They raise their children on violence, terrorism and killing.”
• Abdelrahman Badawy, imam of the Muslim American Society Staten Island Center, preached that “the devils, the Zionists, have no interest in leaving the Muslims alone over there [in Israel/Palestine]. They don’t care which borders you go back to; they are going to keep taking and taking and taking.”
• Denmark’s Sheikh Abu Bilal Ismail, in a sermon at Berlin’s Al-Nur mosque, said “Oh, Allah, destroy the Zionist Jews … Count them and kill them to the very last one. Don’t spare a single one of them. Make them suffer terribly.”
• Imam Eiad Soudan of the Masjid Bilal in Houston stated that one of the “many problems” associated with Jews is that they “like to take control of the economy” and that they “seek corruption in the land.”
• Amim Tarik Ata of the Orange County Islamic Foundation in California preached that “every ounce of fear and anger that you put in the heart of [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu and his thugs … every ounce of fear that you put in their hearts by your lawful protests is rewarded by Allah.”
• Yasir Qadhi, imam at the East Plano Islamic Center in Texas, in telling congregants to side with Iran over the US and Israel, called Israel a “blood thirsty, colonialist, settler enterprise” that has committed “genocide” and has “trampled on every single remnant of human dignity [and] blatantly justifies starvation of tens of thousands of children.”

Are these continuing fulminations and threats, all of them made in the name of the mayor-elect’s faith, an appropriate use of a “sacred space”?

Uganda-born Mamdani — who will be sworn in as Mayor of his adopted city on January 1, taking an oath of office to protect the interests of the citizens of this country, and who has vehemently pledged that he will speak up against antisemitism — will also certainly wish to criticize the words cited above.

This publication will certainly save space for his words.