Two men have been charged with attempting to support the Islamic State after a homemade bomb laced with powerful explosives was thrown at anti-Islam protesters outside the New York City mayor’s residence on Saturday. The device did not detonate and no one was injured. But officials said the attack could have been disastrous.
Zohran Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor, on Sunday named the “white supremacist” behind the protest—not the attack—in a post on social media, describing their actions as being “rooted in bigotry and racism.” But he at first chose to omit the names of the arrested suspects, and, indeed, failed to mention that they had themselves revealed the violent Islamist roots of their actions.
Emir Balat, 18, reportedly shouted “Allahu akbar” at the scene, and allegedly said after being cuffed: “This isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet. We take action. If I didn’t do it, someone else will come and do it.”
Ibrahim Kayumi, 19, was also captured on police bodycam footage responding “ISIS” when someone in the crowd asked him “why he had to do this.”
Author Hans Mahncke said Mamdani’s initial omission of these details made this “probably the most maliciously dishonest tweet ever posted.”
There is no question that a profoundly dangerous man is running New York City.
Filmmaker Dinesh D’Souza added that the statement had been “artfully written to conceal the fact that two Muslim terrorists who are quite likely Mamdani supporters were the perpetrators of this bomb attack.”
Mamdani did later—after the pair’s arrest, and in a much shorter post—apparently reluctantly reveal the suspects’ names. Reporter Brecca Stoll criticised the fact that it took him “50 hours and two minutes” to do so.
The mayor is also currently under fire over his wife’s Gaza views, after reports revealed she had liked social media posts supporting the October 7th attacks by Hamas terrorists. Mamdani has insisted that her views are “private,” and The New York Times has also rather pedantically highlighted that “they were not married when she liked the posts.”
Because of this ongoing saga, D’Souza jibed in response to the mayor’s post naming the alleged attackers: “I wonder what your wife thinks about them. Have you had that conversation?”
Michael Curzon is a news writer for europeanconservative.com based in England’s Midlands. He is also Editor of Bournbrook Magazine, which he founded in 2019, and previously wrote for London’s Express Online. His Twitter handle is @MichaelCurzon_.
