Far-left Islamic activist, mentor to Mamdani, vows to ‘hold Zohran accountable’ if he wins NYC mayoral race

In an Instagram livestream Saturday night obtined by Fox News, Sarsour told followers, “Electing Zohran doesn’t mean we’re going to let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall. I’m not going to work for the Zohran administration. I’m going to stay outside, because our friends on the inside need people on the outside to hold them accountable.”

In the video, Sarsour wasn’t supportive of Mamdani’s decision to retain Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch but noted that the commissioner answers to the mayor and would be required to carry out his directives, including disbanding the SRG. She said, “If Zohran says ‘do A-B-C,’ Tisch has to do it. If she doesn’t, then we’ll go to Zohran and ask how he plans to hold her accountable.”

Sarsour, a Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) member, has been a political mentor of Mamdani's. The two worked together in 2017 while canvassing for Khader El-Yateem, another DSA-backed city-council candidate. Mamdani then joined the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, which Sarsour co-founded. She endorsed his state-assembly campaign and was an early supporter of his mayoral race.

DSA’s leaders have openly described their plan to use the Democratic Party to win elections and take it over from within.

According to DSA’s strategy document, Resistance Rising: Socialist Strategy in the Age of Political Revolution, the group runs candidates as Democrats in deep-blue districts, wins low-turnout primaries, and then uses those offices to advance a socialist agenda dictated by DSA’s internal working groups rather than local party leaders or voters.

Campaign-finance records show that Mamdani’s campaign has paid nearly $29,000 to the DSA for canvassing, and many of his senior staffers come directly from DSA ranks.

The DSA’s has its own problems with violent antisemitism. The New York City DSA organized a pro-Hamas rally in Times Square on October 8, 2023, while Palestinian terrorists were still murdering 1,200 Israelis and taking over 250 hostage. Protesters at the rally burned Israeli flags, waved swastikas, and chanted in support of “resistance.”

According to Fox News, Sarsour’s organization, MPower Action, is part of a coalition of more than 100 progressive and labor groups mobilizing to elect New York’s first Muslim mayor. “When he does something wrong in City Hall, I’m going to tell him he’s wrong,” Sarsour said. “Voting for Zohran is not giving him a blank check.”

Sarsour also said of Mamdani’s alliances with radical Muslim clerics, including Siraj Wahhaj, a Brooklyn imam who testified as a character witness for one of the 1993 World Trade Center bombers, “You can’t be a Marxist and a jihadist at the same time. You gotta pick a side. Either we’re theocrats or we’re leftists, those things don’t go together.”

Sarsour ended the stream by saying, “When Zohran gets inaugurated in January, we’ll have to be the people outside. He’ll have to tell his critics, ‘Those people out there, those activists, those organizers, I’m accountable to them.’”

During a previous livestream obtained by Canary Mission, Sarsour, who was ousted as one of the heads of the Women’s March in 2019 for her virulent antisemitism, also acknowledged that Mamdani’s campaign was not grassroots, and was backed financially from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and other Muslim political action committees.

“It’s not random that Zohran ascended to this place,” she said. “It is our Muslim American communities. And I’ll also say that it’s Muslim money… The Unity and Justice Fund PAC, which is the CAIR super PAC, was the largest institutional donor to the pro-Zohran PAC in New York.”

During the landmark Holy Land Foundation terrorism-financing trial, federal prosecutors identified CAIR as an unindicted co-conspirator, citing evidence that tied the foundation’s fundraising network to Hamas. Members of Congress have called for investigations into the group arguing that it maintains ties to radical Islamist organizations.

In 2014, the United Arab Emirates formally designated CAIR a terrorist organization, citing alleged links to the Muslim Brotherhood. CAIR was ousted from the Biden administration’s task force on antisemitism after CAIR’s founder Nihad Awad said the Oct 7 massacre of over 1,200 Jews made him “happy.”

During her Saturday night stream, Sarsour also expressed her support candidates Amar Fateh in Minneapolis and Mussa Ali in Jersey City, both endorsed by CAIR.