Mayor Mamdani Visited an Islamic Center Whose Imam Minimized the Holocaust in 2006 and Praised Hamas in 2023. The Free Beacon Counted Four Visits.
- 4Documented visits by Zohran Mamdani to Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center (Jamaica, Queens) and its lead imam between January 2025 and February 2026. The most recent was Friday prayers on the first Friday of Ramadan 2026 — as sitting NYC Mayor.
- 2006Year Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani told the New York Sun the Jewish death toll in the Holocaust “has been exaggerated... The numbers, the reasons, we have to study more... done by the Zionists.”
- Nov 3, 2023Al-Khoei sermon (captured by MEMRI) in which Al-Sahlani praised Hamas as having “made a big difference for the whole world — maybe it will wake up the very sleepy Arab world.”
- Jan 1, 2026Date Mamdani was inaugurated as NYC’s first Muslim mayor, after defeating Andrew Cuomo (D) by ~12 points in the June 2025 Democratic primary and winning the November 2025 general.
- DSAMamdani is a dues-paying member of Democratic Socialists of America, a former NY State Assemblymember (NY-36), has refused to condemn the slogan “globalize the intifada,” and has said he would order NYPD to arrest PM Netanyahu if he set foot in NYC.
- CondemnedMamdani’s mayoral office told the Washington Free Beacon that Al-Sahlani’s Holocaust and Hamas statements are “diametrically opposed to the mayor’s values.” The four documented visits themselves are the record.
On May 21, 2026, the Washington Free Beacon's Jon Levine published a count: NYC Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani (D) has made at least four documented visits to Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani and the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Centerin Jamaica, Queens between January 2025 and February 2026 — three during his mayoral campaign, and one on February 20, 2026, as the sitting mayor of the City of New York, at Friday prayers on the first Friday of Ramadan.
The lead cleric of that center, Sheikh Al-Sahlani, has a public record going back twenty years. In 2006, he told the New York Sun's Daniel Treiman that the Jewish death toll in the Holocaust “has been exaggerated” and that the killing was, in part, “done by the Zionists.” On November 3, 2023, in a sermon recorded by MEMRI, he praised Hamas as having “made a big difference for the whole world.” On February 20, 2026, the Friday prayer service Mamdani attended as mayor included a Mahdi supplication asking, in part, for “the killing of the infidels by your sword.”
This page is not the claim that Mayor Mamdani is antisemitic. His mayoral-office spokesperson, in response to the Free Beacon's reporting, called Al-Sahlani's Holocaust and Hamas statements “diametrically opposed to the mayor's values.”The page is the claim that the documented record — four visits, by a sitting mayor and the candidate who became him, to a cleric whose public statements have been on the record for two decades — is worth a paragraph in the civic ledger.
Jon Levine's May 21, 2026 piece for the Washington Free Beacon is the trigger document. It catalogs four Mamdani appearances tied to Al-Khoei and to Sheikh Al-Sahlani between January 2025 and February 2026: an early-2025 campaign visit; a July 2025 campaign visit (the same month Mamdani drew criticism for a separate Bay Ridge mosque appearance covered by the Brooklyn Eagle); an August 2025 fundraiser at the Long Island home of the Al-Khoei Foundation's representative to the United Nations; and the February 20, 2026 Friday prayers at Al-Khoei itself, with Mamdani by then the sitting mayor.
On camera during that February visit, Mamdani told the congregation:
“It feels like returning home to be here.”
Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) · Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center · Feb 20, 2026 (on camera, captured by MEMRI)
Al-Khoei is the largest Shia Muslim institution in New York City. It is not a fringe address. It has hosted Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D-NY-13), former Queens assemblyman Brian M. McLaughlin, and (as MEMRI separately documented) DSA-Democrat congressional candidate Darializa Avila Chevalier. The civic question the Free Beacon story raises is not whether Al-Khoei has political traffic. It is whether the lead cleric of an institution that draws political traffic has a public record that institutional visitors are expected to weigh.
In March 2006, the New York Sun's Daniel Treiman sat down with Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani for an on-record interview. The piece, “Imam's Remarks on Holocaust May Be Costly,” quotes Al-Sahlani directly. The next month, Beliefnet's Walter Ruby published a follow-up interview under the headline “A Kinder, Gentler Holocaust Denier” in which Al-Sahlani softened tone but did not retract the substance. The verbatim line from the Sun:
“The numbers which have been mentioned are too much... The numbers, the reasons, we have to study more. Some of them say the reason for the Holocaust was (that it was) done by the Zionists.”
Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani · New York Sun interview by Daniel Treiman · 2006
Seventeen years later, on November 3, 2023, MEMRI recorded Al-Sahlani delivering a sermon at Al-Khoei in which he praised the October 7 attackers in language that the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee both, separately, flagged as endorsement rather than commentary:
“Hamas has made a big difference for the whole world — maybe it will wake up the very sleepy Arab world.”
Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani · Al-Khoei sermon · MEMRI TV clip · Nov 3, 2023
And on February 20, 2026 — the day Mamdani attended Friday prayers as sitting mayor — the Mahdi supplication recited during the service included the phrase MEMRI translated as:
“...the killing of the infidels by your sword.”
Mahdi supplication · Al-Khoei Friday prayers · Feb 20, 2026 (MEMRI translation)
The Free Beacon's four-visit timeline runs like this. January 2025: Mamdani, then a NY State Assemblymember for NY-36 and a declared mayoral candidate, appears at Al-Khoei alongside Sheikh Al-Sahlani. July 2025: a second campaign visit, the same month the Brooklyn Eagle covered Mamdani's separate Bay Ridge mosque appearance and the criticism it drew. August 2025: a campaign fundraiser at the Long Island home of the Al-Khoei Foundation's UN representative, attended by Al-Sahlani. February 20, 2026: Friday prayers at Al-Khoei itself, as sitting NYC mayor, on the first Friday of Ramadan.
Mamdani won the June 2025 Democratic primary against former governor Andrew Cuomo (D) by roughly twelve points, with the cross-endorsement of NYC Comptroller Brad Lander (D) in the closing weeks. He won the November 2025 general election against outgoing Mayor Eric Adams (D) (running on an independent line). He was inaugurated as NYC's first Muslim mayor on January 1, 2026. The August 2025 fundraiser is the visit ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt referenced when he later told NPR the ADL would launch a “Mamdani Monitor” tracker covering the mayor-elect's public statements and associations.
I am not aware of NYC Mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani visiting a single mainstream synagogue or Jewish community since the primary ended. He has, however, spoken at the Imam Al-Khoei Foundation — whose cleric Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani has, on the public record, minimized the Holocaust and praised Hamas. The pattern is the pattern.
Substance summarized from Greenblatt's August 2025 X thread on Mamdani; rendered here as a hand-rolled card with link to the source post.
The Free Beacon called the mayor's office for comment before publication. The spokesperson's on-record statement is the cleanest piece of accountability journalism in the piece, and is reproduced here verbatim:
“Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani's Holocaust denial and comments about Hamas are diametrically opposed to the mayor's values and everything he has said and stood for. Like many elected officials, the mayor has visited many houses of worship and religious institutions across New York City. No visit should ever be construed as an endorsement of every statement made by every individual affiliated with those institutions.”
Mayoral office spokesperson · Statement to the Washington Free Beacon · May 21, 2026
That denunciation is the proper editorial counterweight. It is also worth holding in tension with the underlying record: the cleric's 2006 Holocaust statement was not a private aside — it ran in the New York Sun under his own byline-by-attribution. The 2023 Hamas-praise sermon was recorded and subtitled by MEMRI within days. The cleric named in the May 2026 Free Beacon piece is the cleric whose statements have been on the public record continuously for twenty years. A mayoral office that knows the values are opposed and that visited four times anyway is doing two things at once, and the civic ledger reflects both.
Zohran Mamdani is a Communist Lunatic running the greatest city in America. He has refused to condemn calls to 'globalize the intifada,' has said he would have NYPD arrest a sitting head of state of one of our greatest allies, and now we learn he visited a Holocaust-denying imam FOUR times. New York City deserves so much better.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Composite paraphrase of President Trump's post-March 2026 Truth Social statements about Mayor Mamdani, cross-referenced via Time, NBC New York, and Washington Post coverage of the President's public posture toward the new mayor. Rendered as a static QuoteCard.
The mainstreaming of antisemitism inside the Democratic Party is no longer a fringe story. When the mayor of New York City repeatedly breaks bread with a cleric on the public record minimizing the Holocaust, the press should not need a paragraph of context. The visits are the story.
Paraphrased commentary · not a verbatim post
Paraphrased to capture the substance of Stephen Miller's May 2026 Truth Social commentary on the Mamdani-Al-Khoei reporting. Rendered as a static QuoteCard rather than an embedded post.
This is not a claim about the mayor's private beliefs.His office's denunciation of Sheikh Al-Sahlani's statements is on the record and reproduced above. The page accepts that denunciation at face value.
This is a claim about a documented pattern. Four visits to the same cleric, across a campaign and into a sitting mayoral term, when that cleric's 2006 Holocaust statements and 2023 Hamas-praise sermon were both on the public record before any of the visits took place. The number is four. The cleric is named. The statements are on the record.
The civic question is not whether the mayor is antisemitic. The civic question is whether elected officials are expected to vet the public record of the clerics they repeatedly stand next to. The Free Beacon put a number on that question. The page logs it.
Four documented visitsby Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) to Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani and the Imam Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens, between January 2025 and February 2026 — three during the mayoral campaign, one as the sitting NYC mayor on the first Friday of Ramadan 2026.
One cleric, twenty-year public record. The 2006 New York Sun interview minimizing the Jewish Holocaust death toll. The November 2023 Al-Khoei sermon praising Hamas. The February 2026 Mahdi supplication recited at the prayer service Mamdani attended.
One on-record denunciationfrom the mayor's spokesperson calling Al-Sahlani's statements “diametrically opposed” to the mayor's values — alongside the visits themselves, which are the documented record.
The page does not assert antisemitism. It asserts that four visits, to a named cleric, by a sitting mayor of the largest city in America, when the cleric's public record was on the public record the entire time, belong in the civic ledger.