Latest news with #MahmoodMamdani
Forbes
31-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Does Young Cardamom Help Zohran Mamdani?
Zohran Mamdani is charming much of New York City, and young people all over the world. The Indian-African American, who identifies as Muslim, uses the affectionate "habibi" in his campaign videos, smiling goofily and using big hands while taking down the establishment. Almost exactly 10 years before he was grooming the city to become its first Muslim mayor, the would-be Democratic Socialist was speaking his mind under the rap alias Young Cardamom, dropped to Mr. Cardamom as a solo performer in 2019. Cardamom is named for a rather innocuous spice dominant in South Asian and Middle Eastern desserts. His sole remaining YouTube video extols the virtues of the world's greatest gangster, the Nani, or Desi grandmother, who slaps men in the reel. According to its review in the New York Times, the video was inspired by his grandmother, retired Delhi social worker Parveen Nair, shot for free in a Bangladeshi Kabab King. Such is his gift: to straddle the line of comic tragedy, of elite art and systemic class inequity. Family is a big part of Mamdani's trajectory. His musical breakthrough came for the Disney+ release of Queen of Katwe in 2016, directed by his mother Mira Nair, and starring Lupita Nyong'o. Mamdani's father, Mahmood Mamdani, is a Gujrati-born Muslim academic celebrated in Uganda, the setting for the true story used in the film. Lupita is the daughter of a Kenyan academic, Peter Anyang' Nyong'o, who once taught at the University of Nairobi before transitioning into politics. One of her first opportunities was on the production crew of Mira Nair's 2006 film, The Namesake. Nair has been quoted in Variety as saying that it was teenaged Zohran Mamdani who encouraged her to take the project and cast Kal Penn. Madamani saw past the "stoner" persona of Kumar in the cult classic Harold and Kumar go to White Castle, and the narrative significance to Muslim Americana. 'It was such a valuable, beautiful piece of advice,' Nair said of Mamdani's recommendation. She added, 'I always definitely hear him when [we] talk about the story I'm making, or who I'm thinking of, or who's good — or who's not.' At 23, Mamdani collaborated with rapper HAB, releasing an album in the Luganda language titled 'Sidda Mukyaalo', meaning, 'I Shall not Return to the Village', or "No Going Back to the Village." Mamdani told Okay Africa at the time that the title was inspired by a boda, or motorcycle driver, a few weeks prior, with the slogan written on the back of his jacket in Kampala."And it's true for the two of us as well, although for different reasons," Mamdani told the interviewer. "I can't go back to the village because, as an Asian Ugandan, I simply do not have any village. The city is all I have." Mamdani says he is a third generation Ugandan, presumably through his father, whose family fled colonial India in the early 1900s. Political opponents in the United States, including Black American Mayor Eric Adams, have lambasted Mamdani for identifying as partly African on his rejected Columbia University application, evoking parallels to the 'birther' movement, with paranoia surrounding Barack Obama's Hawaiian birth certificate during his successful presidential campaign. But Mamdani certainly walked the walk in Africa. As Young Cardamom, he and his partner HAB rapped in six different languages: Luganda, the language of Uganda, Hindi, the language of his parents, Swahili, Runyoro, and Nubi. He sought to find the complicated voice of a city, and continues to do so now in New York. Mamdani's mother, Mira Nair, has always amplified her filmmaking storytelling with bold musical choices. The 2001 film Monsoon Wedding features a robust blend of Indian sounds, from trance-like background character songs to poppy Bollywood choreography. In the 2012 film, The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a hauntingly good Pakistani Qawwali opens the mysterious and shadowy themes. In tandem with Mamdani's interest in music was his lens on the world through race. He said he was "mistaken for white growing up in Africa," but that, "in the the opposite." The language Mamdani determined for New York was not one of the African dialects he used back in even Hindi. It was the language of terror. "Security clearly understands me as brown and Muslim," he told Okay Africa about New York, "And so views me as a threat." Mamdani pointed out Young Cardamom and HAB's song Askari, about the security guards in Kampala and their implicit bias against Black faces. "This song came out of our personal experiences," he explained. 'Whenever any of my non-black friends or family come home, the gate swings open immediately. When it's a black friend or family member, it always takes a bit longer.' In 2017, one year after the Queen of Katwe soundtrack, Mamdani released Salaam under his middle name, Zohran Kwame. He has described himself as a "C-list rapper," and certainly, this solo track is musically uninspired. Lyrically, Mamdani references his mother in the track. But controversially, he also sends his "love" to the Holy Land Five, a group of Palestinian Americans who sent 12 million USD to Hamas and were imprisoned for terrorism. It is unclear whether Mamdani actually speaks Arabic, the origin of the word Salaam, which means "peace", although his wife, Rama Duwaji, is of Syrian origin. Despite the six languages of Young Cardamom, there is no mention of "Shalom," the Hebrew greeting for peace, linguistically from the same Aramaic root. In his 2019 Times' feature, it was noted that Mamdani was professionally focused on dispossessed people in New York at risk of losing their homes. The New York Post, which continues to lambast his platform, noted that as a member of the New York Assembly, he introduced a bill to end the tax-exempt status of the charities with ties to Israeli settlements "that violate international human rights law". In childhood, it was Mamdani who encouraged his mother to focus on more independent, Muslim-oriented stories. He told her to turn down Harry Potter, starring ethnically Jewish Daniel Radcliffe, and she rejected The Devil Wears Prada, starring Jewish convert Anne Hathaway and based on the autobiographical book by Jewish author Lauren Weisberger. Throughout his campaign, Mamdani has insisted he is not Anti-Semitic, and has received endorsements from Jewish politicians and regular New Yorkers. Rather, he insists he is asking larger questions about free speech and unlawful detainment, derailing biased power structures in the name of justice. Alas, music is no longer his primary vehicle for self-expression.
Wall Street Journal
24-07-2025
- Politics
- Wall Street Journal
Downwardly Mobile Elites Love Zohran Mamdani
One of the most important things to understand about Zohran Mamdani, the 33-year-old socialist who recently stunned the political establishment by winning the Democratic mayoral nomination in New York City, is that he has spent his young adult life much worse off than his parents. He knows the sting of having grown up in bourgeois comfort only to find himself scrambling to pay the rent in a less fashionable neighborhood. That experience is a major reason why he's emerged as the darling of the millennial left, a movement defined by its sense of downward mobility. It would have been hard for any young adult to match the accomplishments of Mamdani's father, Mahmood Mamdani, a tenured professor at Columbia University and prominent left-wing intellectual, and his mother, Mira Nair, a renowned filmmaker whose directorial debut, 'Salaam Bombay!,' was released to global acclaim when she was 31. But even the children of less successful Boomers often feel as though they haven't measured up to their parents.
Fox News
21-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Unearthed Mamdani clip reveals how his upbringing made him open to being called 'radical,' socialist
A resurfaced interview by New York City socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani shows him explaining that the family he grew up in made him "open" to being a "radical" and suggesting that socialism needs to be re-branded. "I think, honestly, growing up in the family that I grew up in, I was quite open to what would be considered being a radical from a very young age," Mamdani said on The Far Left Show in 2020. "I mean, from the beginning, my identities are already considered radical by a lot of mainstream American political thought. So being a Muslim, being an immigrant, these are things that already kind of put you in the box of 'other.' And so it's not that far of a jump because whenever you... stand up to speak up for the rights of others who share the same identity as you, then you're a radical, right? So often people in this country are considered radicals if they stand up for Palestinian human rights." Mamdani has faced criticism over some of his positions taken as a young man, including supporting an academic boycott of Israel and starting a Students for Justice in Palestine chapter during his college days, as well as the past writings of his father, Mahmood Mamdani. Mahmood Mamdani's social media presence is littered with anti-Israel positions referring to Israelis as "colonial settlers" and celebrating the idea of a "third intifada." Additionally, Mahmood Mamdani sits on the council of an openly anti-Israel tribunal and once wrote in a book that suicide bombers "stigmatized as a mark of barbarism." "Zohran Mamdani has built his political brand on the same radical, hate-filled and anti-American ideology his father, Mahmood Mamdani, has spent decades promoting—one that demonizes Jewish people and legitimizes anti-democratic violence," Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney who specializes in antisemitism, told Fox News Digital earlier this month. "The Jew-hatred the Mamdani family peddles is fundamentally anti-American and violates the core values our country was founded on—tolerance, equality, and liberty. Our nation's strength lies in its diversity and commitment to protecting minority rights. Antisemitic world views threaten the peace and security of our communities." In the interview, the younger Mamdani went on to lament the criticism that Democratic Socialists of America have faced for supporting BDS. BDS is described as "an international campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel as the expression of the Jewish people's right to national self-determination by isolating the country economically through consumer boycotts, business and government withdrawal of investment, and legal sanctions," according to Influence Watch. Mamdani also explained in the interview his evolution as a "socialist." "I think I've been a socialist for quite a while, but I don't think I understood myself within the terms of that label," Mamdani said. "And I think that that is something that I not only internalized, but also became comfortable expressing when I became an active member of New York City DSA, which is an organization that I've been a member of. I attended my first meeting in early 2017, but I've been a much more active member since 2018." Mamdani added that he hopes to rebrand the word socialism to be more appetizing for the general public. "I think, for me, a lot of times people try and scare you into never embracing the word, and I think that there's a lot of work that we have to do to change our branding, because socialism in and of itself, the way I understand it, is a fight for the state to provide all that is necessary to live a dignified life for each and every person in our state," Mamdani explained. "That is something that when you explain it in that way, and when you talk about the way in which it is applied, when you're talking about typically housing, healthcare, education, but I would argue we must expand that beyond and talk about public transit and talk about the internet and talk childcare. People are receptive to that." Fox News Digital reached out to the Mamdani campaign for comment.
New York Post
16-07-2025
- Politics
- New York Post
Zohran Mamdani followed in dad's footsteps to found SJP
Zohran Mamdani followed in his father's path by setting up a branch of a US radical Muslim group at his elite alma mater in Maine, The Post has learned. The Democratic mayoral nominee co-founded a branch of Students for Justice for Palestine at Bowdoin College in 2013, two years after his professor father, Mahmood Mamdani, gave the keynote address at the inaugural national conference of the group in October 2011. 'Whereas Apartheid South Africa was reluctant to claim that it was a white state, a white democracy, Israel is not. Advertisement 6 Zohran Mamdani at a 2014 meeting of Students for Justice in Palestine, a radical anti-Israel group he helped set up at Bowdoin College in Maine. Bowdoin SJP/ Facebook 'Israel publicly claims it's a Jewish state and it demands that Palestinians acknowledge it as such…Israel was not South Africa. In many ways, it was, and is, worse than South Africa,' said Mamdani Snr., a professor of government and anthropology at Columbia University, in his speech. The professor, 79, also claimed Israel admired the US for 'dealing' with its indigenous populations after it was settled by Europeans. 'The Zionists think of that particular part of American history as inspirational,' he said. Advertisement 'Like father, like son,' said Ari Shrage, co-founder of Columbia University's Jewish Alumni Association. 6 Zohran Mamdani was influenced by his father, Mahmood Mamdani (right), who gave the keynote speech at the first national convention of the Students for Justice in Palestine at Columbia. His mother, filmmaker Mira Nair, is pictured left with Zohran and his wife Rama Duwaji center. Getty Images 'It's not a surprise that he learned from his father who teaches at the epicenter of anti-Israel indoctrination,' he added, referring to Columbia. The 2011 national conference, titled 'Students Confronting Apartheid Students for Justice in Palestine: First National Conference 2011' drew 350 student activists from across the country to Columbia, according to a report, which also noted participants headed to the Occupy Wall Street encampment in the Financial District to protest corporate greed. Advertisement Following Zohran Mamdani's stunning victory in the Democratic primary earlier this month, the spotlight has turned to his family's ties to anti-Israel groups. His father sits on the advisory council of the recently formed London-based Gaza Tribunal, which accuses Israel of committing genocide. 6 Hatem Bazian, a professor at UC Berkeley, is the founder of American Muslims for Palestine and co-founder of Students for Justice in Palestine. UC Berkeley Mamdani Sr. also made it on to a list of 'Professors to Avoid' along with AMP founder Hatem Bazian published by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, a conservative think tank. The list includes professors across the country who 'are most responsible for the politicization and bias sadly endemic to Middle East Studies,' according to the Campus Watch web site. After Zohran founded the SJP chapter at Bowdoin, the group had an active Twitter account promoting lectures such as 'The Winter of Arab Discontent' in Nov. 2013 and support for the American Studies Association's boycott of Israel. Advertisement That same year the Bowdoin College chapter of SJP invited a radical Lebanese-American academic As'ad AbuKhalil, to speak. Among his rhetoric he has called Israel a bigger threat than Hamas and said that the US had brought the Sept. 11 terrorist strikes on itself. 6 Mahmood Mamdani, a professor of government and anthroplogy at Columbia University, was included on a list of 'Professors to Avoid' in Middle East Studies by Campus Watch. Robert Miller for NY Post 6 A picture of Zohran Mamdani from the archive of the Bowdoin student newspaper in 2010, which he contributed articles for. The Bowdoin Orient 6 (L-R) Zohran Mamdani, mother Mira Nair, father Mahmood Mamdani and friend Nishant Tharani at the world premiere of 'Queen of Katwe,' directed by Nair, at the 2016 Toronto Film Festival. Getty Images for Disney The Bowdoin SJP's Twitter account remained active until late 2015 after Mamdani graduated, while a Facebook group lasted a few more months, posting until March 2016. Last year, Students for Justice in Palestine organized student encampments across the country, including a large one at Columbia. Its umbrella group, American Muslims for Palestine has been named in US federal lawsuits brought by victims of the October 7 Hamas attacks, as well as the family of David Boim, the first victim of the terrorist group, who was gunned down at a bus stop in Jerusalem in 1996. 'If Hamas has practiced versions of indiscriminate and aimless violence — which I personally reject on principle – it should be pointed out that Israeli terrorism, in scale and in magnitude, by far exceeds that of Hamas, but nobody has noticed here in the US,' Mamdani Snr. wrote in a blog post in 2006. Advertisement He's also come under attack on social media where an excerpt from one of his books recently surfaced. 'Suicide bombing needs to be understood as a feature of modern political violence rather than stigmatized as a mark of barbarism,' the elder Mamdani wrote in his 2004 book 'Good Muslim, Bad Muslim: America, the Cold War, and the Roots of Terror.' Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman reposted the excerpt on X earlier this week, noting 'The apple @zohranmamdani doesn't fall far from the tree.' On Tuesday, Mamdani told a group of business leaders that he would not use the phrase 'globalize the intifada,' adopted by anti-Israel protestors as a rallying cry for violence against Israel, following the October 7, 2023 attacks that left 1,200 Israelis dead. Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine and Mahmood Mamdani did not return requests for comment Wednesday.
Fox News
16-07-2025
- Politics
- Fox News
Unearthed social media posts expose radical anti-Israel views of Mamdani's dad: 'Colonial occupation'
FIRST ON FOX: Mahmood Mamdani, the Columbia University professor and father of New York City socialist mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani, has a social media presence littered with anti-Israel comments and praise for radical activists, a Fox News Digital review found. Mamdani, 79, who Fox News Digital previously reported sits on the advisory council of an anti-Israel organization that supports boycotts and sanctions of Israel, has posted on his X account about Israel on multiple occasions using terms like "settlers" and "colonialism." "When all ranks of the Occupation, from the armed settler to the settler state, claim 'the right of self-defense', what language is left for those who defend themselves against the Occupation but the right to resist?," Mamdani posted online on May 21, 2021 as Israel was involved in a violent conflict with Hamas. Earlier that month, Mamdani wrote, "The resistance this time began in Jerusalem and spread to Gaza, now the West Bank and Palestinian communities beyond. This is not a conflict between Israel and Hamas. We are witnessing something far more meaningful, the birth of the Third Intifadah against settler colonialism!." Calls for a third intifada or a "global intifada", which Zohran Mamdani recently drew heat from Jewish groups for refusing to condemn, is widely considered by many in the Jewish community as condoning violence against Israel. "Palestinians have a right to resist," Mamdani said in another post. "This is a colonial occupation, not a conflict!" In October 2014, Mamdani posted a "tribute" to African political activist Ali Mazrui, who Mamdani once co-hosted a panel alongside, according to Middle East Forum. Mazrui has a long track record of controversial statements about Jews including suggesting they had "a certain kind of impurity" likening them to "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" and saying they've "landed with Mr. Hyde's evil identity," Middle East Forum reported. Past statements on Israel from both Zohran and Mahmood Mamdani have been a focus of the mayoral race with various Jewish groups speaking out and accusing the pair of antisemitism, a charge that Mamdani has pushed back against. Mahmood, a professor of anthropology at New York's Columbia University, which has been at the epicenter of the pro-Palestine protests in the U.S. Canary Mission, calls Mahmood a "Marxist" professor who is "known for his anti-Israel views and obsession with 'colonialism.'" Mahmood was also one of the Columbia faculty members who donned an orange vest and locked arms in attempts to keep Avi Weinberg, an economics student at Columbia, and a small group of Jewish classmates from entering a pro-Palestine encampment on Columbia's campus during the anti-Israel protests following the October 7th Hamas massacre. "Zohran Mamdani has built his political brand on the same radical, hate-filled and anti-American ideology his father, Mahmood Mamdani, has spent decades promoting—one that demonizes Jewish people and legitimizes anti-democratic violence," Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney who specializes in antisemitism, told Fox News Digital. "The Jew-hatred the Mamdani family peddles is fundamentally anti-American and violates the core values our country was founded on—tolerance, equality, and liberty. Our nation's strength lies in its diversity and commitment to protecting minority rights. Antisemitic world views threaten the peace and security of our communities." Goldstein told Fox News Digital that Mahmood Mamdani's "dangerous worldview doesn't belong anywhere in American public life." "It is also a window on anti-Jewish and anti-democratic radicalization that poisons our young, corrupts their minds and steals their souls," Goldstein continued. "If Zohran Mamdani can't—or won't—disavow these beliefs, we have every reason to be alarmed. We don't need anti-American racist Jew-haters in government. We need leaders who protect all of us—not divide us, or worse, decide which among us are worth protecting." Fox News Digital reached out to Mahmood Mamdani and the Mamdani campaign for comment.
