By Anouchka Ettedgui, Staff Writer
In the age of identity politics and performative progressivism, few figures embody contradiction as vividly as New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Depending on the audience, Mamdani is either an unapologetically woke socialist who champions every liberal cause imaginable or a devout Muslim embracing his faith and its traditional institutions. Both images cannot simultaneously be true, yet Mamdani manages to move fluidly between them, cultivating alliances that would appear mutually exclusive to most.
This paradox has prompted a growing question about what truly drives Mamdani’s politics: Is it conviction or calculation?
In Islamic political history, taqiyya refers to the practice of concealing one’s true religious beliefs when revealing them may be dangerous or strategically unwise. Over time, it has evolved from a doctrine of protection into a broader form of discretion, allowing individuals to navigate hostile environments or reveal only what supports their goals. In modern political settings, this often means highlighting certain beliefs while obscuring others to appeal to different audiences. It can also involve adjusting one’s public persona depending on who is watching.
History offers clear examples of taqiyya being used to gain influence rather than to survive. Founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Khomeini, for example, intentionally softened or obscured his Shia revolutionary agenda when preaching in Sunni-majority regions before 1979. This allowed him to gain support from a wider audience, before he revealed the full scope of his ideology only after he secured power. In reality, Khomeini’s concealment ran far deeper: in Paris, he reassured Western journalists, liberal activists, and Iranian progressives that he supported democracy, women’s rights, and pluralism, positions entirely at odds with the theocracy he later built. Many secular and left-leaning groups backed him precisely because they believed these promises, unaware that he was strategically presenting different promises to different audiences.
Taqiyya is not inherently deceptive. Across history, many vulnerable religious and cultural minorities have relied on forms of strategic discretion simply to survive persecution or discrimination. But when a tactic rooted in self-preservation is repurposed by powerful actors, it invites serious questions about authenticity and intent.
This brings us back to Zohran Mamdani.
Take his recent campaign ad, which was entirely in Arabic and featured only the Palestinian flag. For a politician representing a diverse district in Queens in the New York State Assembly, the absence of any American imagery or English-language messaging was striking. The ad’s symbolism spoke volumes: an appeal not to the broader electorate, but to a specific identity-based constituency.
Yet days earlier, Mamdani proudly appeared at a Pride parade, waving rainbow flags and championing LGBTQ+ rights. The event celebrated values explicitly rejected by many of the Islamist figures that Mamdani openly praises. Among these figures is Imam Siraj Wahhaj, an unindicted co-conspirator in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, with whom Mamdani was photographed smiling arm in arm. Wahhaj has publicly denounced homosexuality and Western liberalism. Mamdani celebrating queer pride one week and embracing a man who calls same-sex relationships sinful the next is not just hypocrisy, it’s choreography.
Then there’s Mamdani’s mentor, Father Khader El-Yateem, a Palestinian Lutheran pastor once endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, the New York branch of which has also endorsed Mamdani, a member since around 2017. Mamdani credits El-Yateem for shaping his political worldview.
“My life was transformed by Father Khader El-Yateem,” he said. “My politics, locally and internationally, exist in the context of what he taught me.”
El-Yateem has described Hamas as a movement rather than a terrorist group, claiming that “the Palestinians have the right to resist the Israeli occupation by any means possible.” He has compared Jews to Nazis, propagated conspiracy theories about Israel’s actions on October 7, and shared antisemitic imagery online.
That is the man who inspires Zohran Mamdani’s politics.
Meanwhile, before the election, Mamdani also received an endorsement from a Satmar Hasidic political leader, who described him as “very nice, very humble.” The Satmar community, one of the most religiously conservative Jewish groups in New York, never aligns with liberal causes like access to abortion, LGBTQ+ rights, or socialism. Yet Mamdani has somehow won their approval while simultaneously courting progressive activists with views opposed to theirs.
Mamdani is not hiding his beliefs out of fear. On the contrary, he is tailoring them to every audience, mirroring whoever is in front of him. Taqiyya itself has always existed in two forms: one rooted in survival and the other in ambition. The first protects vulnerable people; the second allows influential figures to expand their reach by selectively revealing their beliefs. In Mamdanis’ case, the pattern suggests that beneath the progressive persona, he presents to some voters lies a deeper alignment with traditionalist and Islamist positions, an ideological core he rarely shows directly, but which becomes clearer in the communities and settings where he feels most at home.
Ayatollah Khomeini illustrates this ambition-driven form of concealment. Before rising to power, he presented himself as a broad, unifying Muslim leader rather than a Shia revolutionary, carefully shaping his image to attract widespread support. Only after he secured power did he reveal the full ideological program he intended to enact. This was a calculated, strategic use of concealment aimed at expanding power, not protecting life.
The danger isn’t just the inconsistency. The pattern presented through historical uses of taqiyya, both for protection and for power, feels uncomfortably relevant here. Just as Khomeini concealed key parts of his ideology until he secured influence, Mamdani’s shifting personas suggest a similar pattern of strategic restraint: shaping his message for each audience while keeping his true convictions obscured.
What began as a religious doctrine of prudence has, in Mamdani’s case, become a political tactic: the art of hiding one’s truest beliefs long enough to win the faith of everyone else.
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