Mahmood Mamdani's Radicalism Resurfaces

_WHAT’S HAPPENING_

The father of socialist NYC mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani is in the spotlight as his radical past (and present) views have risen to the surface during his son’s campaign.

_THE FACTS_

• Zohran Mamdani’s father, Mahmood Mamdani, is an Indian-Ugandan academic known for his radical anti-colonial and anti-Western views.

• The elder Mamdani holds a position on the Gaza Tribunal's advisory policy council, an anti-Israel group launched in London in 2024.

• The Gaza Tribunal exists "to awaken civil society to its responsibility and opportunity to stop Israel's genocide in Gaza.”

• In his 2004 book, Mahmood Mamdani declared that suicide bombing should not be “stigmatized as a mark of barbarism,” and that suicide bombers ought to be recognized “as a category of soldier.”

• Mahmood previously opposed humanitarian intervention in the brutal Darfur genocide, arguing that aid efforts in the region only served to expand Western imperialism.

• He has claimed that the Allied powers in World War II shared the Nazis’ goal of exterminating minority populations in Europe.

• He is skeptical of nationhood itself and believes the nation-state naturally produces violence.

• Mahmood Mamdani is particularly critical of Israel’s existence as a Jewish nation-state, saying that declaring itself to be Jewish was not tolerant, but “moved on to a terrain where ethnic cleansing became thinkable.”

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