THE ISLAMIC TAKEOVER IS HERE: Turning US Cities Into ‘Beachheads’ for Islam

A RealClearInvestigations analysis finds that Islamic activists now hold at least ten (10) high-ranking positions at New York city hall under Mayor Mamdani, including several alumni of terror-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations, which the FBI says is a “Hamas front.” Some of the new Muslim officials are in a position to influence the city’s anti-terror policies and the selection of judges, RCI has learned.

The first phase – the Ground Zero mosque and giant mosques in residential neighborhoods with small Muslim populations were “rabats,” a beachhead to spread Islam. The first rabat appeared at the time of Muhammad. According to Iranian political analyst Amir Taheri:

The Prophet imposed his rule on parts of Arabia through a series of ghazvas, or razzias (the origin of the English word “raid”). The ghazva was designed to terrorize the infidels, convince them that their civilization was doomed and force them to submit to Islamic rule. Those who participated in the ghazva were known as the ghazis, or raiders.

After each ghazva, the Prophet ordered the creation of a rabat – or a point of contact at the heart of the infidel territory raided. The rabat consisted of an area for prayer, a section for the raiders to eat and rest and facilities to train and prepare for future razzias [raids].

Now the beachhead is government.

Related: IMMIGRATION JIHAD: How Muslim Migrants Are Conquering the USA Block by Block

American Medinas: Turning US Cities Into ‘Beachheads’ for Islam

By Paul Sperry, RealClearInvestigations, August 25, 2026:

Founded by Alexander Hamilton as the first industrial city in America, Paterson, N.J.,  is now home to America’s largest Palestinian community and largest proportion of Muslim residents. Today, New Jersey’s third-largest city is effectively run by its 30,000 Muslims, some of whom say they don’t need to learn English because it’s like living “back home” in an Arab city.

Paterson holds an annual Palestinian flag-raising ceremony, during which residents chant, “Free Free Palestine!” And in 2022, it renamed a five-block stretch of Main Street “Palestine Way.”

In June 2023, Paterson Mayor Andre Sayegh signed a sister city agreement with the mayor of Ramallah, a city in the West Bank and the seat of power of the Palestinian Authority, which officially celebrates the killing of Israelis. And last year during a ceremony kicking off Ramadan, he declared his city the “capital of Palestine in the United States of America” and the “fourth-holiest city” in Islam. “We are 100% halal!” Sayegh gushed, meaning pure and lawful under Islam. The mayor even agreed to hang a sign at the city entrance that reads: “Welcome to Little Palestine.”

Paterson is just one of several American cities – which also includes Hamtramck and Dearborn in Michigan – now controlled by Muslims; followers of Islam also exert outsized influence in some larger cities such as Minneapolis and New York.

Cities such as Hamtramck, Mich. reflect the customs and culture of their Muslim residents.

AP

To varying degrees, the actions of Muslims in these communities echo those of immigrant groups who came before them – creating thriving communities that can feel more foreign than American, supporting one another to gain office and influence, renaming streets after their own heroes, giving recognition to their own holidays. But critics warn that communities such as Paterson also reflect the different challenges posed by Islam, which is now the nation’s fastest-growing religion.

As is also the case in Western Europe, assimilation is demonstrably rare in U.S. municipalities with heavy concentrations of Muslim migrants. In these areas, large influxes of Muslims from abroad have changed not only the complexion, culture, values and traditions of cities, but also the demographic makeup of city councils, school boards, police departments and courts. Muslim officials, in turn, have changed laws or how existing laws are enforced to conform to the tenets of Islam – an unwelcome trend for many non-Muslims and particularly Jews threatened by their militantly anti-Israel rhetoric and positions.

“Our number one and top priority is to protect and defend our community, it is not to assimilate,” asserted Linda Sarsour, a renowned Palestinian activist who lives in the Paterson area and has helped transform the city.

RCI’s reporting on this phenomenon has found that Muslims often break with U.S. norms on a wide range of fundamental issues – from the separation of church and state and attitudes toward people of different faiths to what constitutes women’s rights and terrorism. As Muslims remake communities in their own images, they are dramatically changing the ever-evolving idea of what it means to be an American.

Not Alexander Hamilton’s Paterson

This is perhaps no more evident than in Paterson, where elected American officials annually raise the Palestinian flag. Several years ago, Paterson’s Muslim-majority city council voted to change existing noise regulations to allow the city’s dozen mosques to blast out the Islamic call to prayer five times a day – from before dawn to after dusk. The move has incensed some non-Muslim neighbors, including one who recently entered a nearby mosque to complain about the noise. “Everybody’s not Muslim here,” the man yelled. “I don’t want to hear that s— every day.”

Paterson’s largest mosque – the Islamic Center of Passaic County – is run by a radical cleric whose brother-in-law was a senior Hamas commander in the West Bank, where he orchestrated a number of suicide bombings against Israelis. Before immigrating to the U.S. from Jordan, this leading Paterson imam, Mohammad Qatanani, served time in an Israeli prison for his own confessed ties to Hamas. Yet he was presented the keys to the city by Paterson’s mayor in 2024.

Until last year, U.S. immigration authorities had sought to deport Qatanani because he hid his criminal record on applications for a green card. But last year, judges appointed by President Obama and President Biden ruled he could stay in the United States. They did so despite testimony showing that he’d called  for a “new intifada,” or violent Palestinian uprising, against Israel in a Times Square rally in 2017.  Hundreds of Israelis were killed during the first and second intifadas, and Qatanani has supported the families of intifada suicide bombers. A decade earlier, he gave a sermon condemning Christians to hell, telling Paterson’s Muslim faithful that “the followers of Jesus” as Lord will burn in the “pits of hellfire.”

The 62-year-old Qatanani, who has also admitted ties to the terror-tied Muslim Brotherhood, oversees satellite mosques in neighboring Clifton and Prospect Park, N.J., as well. His mentor and predecessor at the Islamic Center was its founder Mohammad El-Mezain. Qatanani worked alongside El-Mezain until El-Mezain was convicted of funneling millions of dollars to Hamas in 2008.

Qatanani denies supporting or advocating violence. He declined further comment.

Intensely political, the Palestinian community in Paterson shows up in force at council meetings, voter drives, and election events. Much of the political organizing centers around mosques, where the Israeli-Gazan war is debated and where politicians are groomed – or shunned. After Hamas terrorists slaughtered more than 1,200 Israeli Jews on Oct. 7, 2023, New Jersey’s U.S. representatives, senators and the state’s governor all declared their support for Israel. In response, Paterson leaders effectively banned the officials from mosques and public spaces in the Palestinian stronghold, according to published reports.

The state’s new Democratic governor, Mikie Sherrill, recently tried to thaw relations by visiting the Islamic Center and snapping a selfie with controversial imam Qatanani. She even covered her head with a hijab, in what critics said was an overt act of pandering to her Islamic hosts.

Paterson Muslims have turned out the vote to elect several brethren as councilmen, including Democrat Alaa Abdelaziz, who last year went on to become New Jersey’s first Palestinian-American state assemblyman. More than 40 Muslims now hold elected office in the state.

Even the Paterson police department has been Islamized – and politicized. More than 30 Muslims are now on the force, and some have sewn the Palestinian flag on their uniforms. Former Paterson Police Chief Ibrahim Baycora was sworn in on the Quran.

Another local hotbed for political activism is the Palestinian American Community Center, a well-funded anti-Israel operation with close to $2 million in assets, according to tax records. A mainstay of the greater Paterson community, the center helps organize the city’s “Palestine Day on Palestine Way” festival and lobbies for U.S. divestment from Israel, which it claims is carrying out “genocide” against the Palestinian people.

The center website claims that “U.S. support for Israel [is] rooted in perceived colonial bonds and white supremacy … Zionism [is] part of a larger Western imperial project.”

The Palestinian center has invited radical Islamists to speak at events as “honored guests,” including Sarsour, an ethnic-Palestinian who has been blacklisted by the Anti-Defamation League. Sarsour says she is anti-Zionist, not antisemitic. It’s a distinction made by many of Israel’s critics, but one that has been increasingly blurred by pro-Palestinian activists. The Paterson center’s publication, the Falastin Magazine, included in its March 2024 issue a poem arguing for Palestine to be free “from the river to the sea,” echoing a Hamas battle cry for wiping Israel off the map.

Muslims led campus protests many considered antisemitic during Israel’s war with Hamas.

AP

Two months after Hamas massacred 1,200 Israeli Jews on Oct. 7, 2023, the center’s president, Diab Mustafa, who grew up on the West Bank, told the New York Times that violent anti-Israel college protests across America “give [him] hope.” His office issues a form for student activists to work alongside Students for Justice in Palestine, a radical pro-Hamas and anti-Israel advocacy group which organizes student protests on college campuses.

While critics warn Paterson functions as an outpost for Hamas, the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ New Jersey chapter counters they’re “conflating Muslim civic participation and Muslim contributions in society with terrorism.” And it warns such criticism could put the Muslim community of Paterson, and specifically its mosques, “in the crosshairs.”

Surrounding New Jersey Towns

As Paterson’s mayor proclaims the city belongs to Islam, the religion’s dominance has spread beyond its borders. In nearby Clifton, N.J., Islamic leaders are proposing to build a new 40,000-square-foot mosque in place of a converted church where Muslims have been congregating. Muslims in Prospect Park, N.J., helped elect Syrian-born Mohamed Khairullah as their mayor. He leads three other Muslim men on the six-member city council.

Prospect’s school board is also packed with Muslim members. Its ethnic-Jordanian vice president, Arwa Bassam Entour, boasts they are “making a change” from the secular ways of the old board, including mandating Islamic holidays and halal school lunches approved by Islamic guidelines banning pork and other foods.

Thanks to chain migration, the area has become a magnet for migrants from Islamic nations. So many Muslims are settling in the Paterson area that apartment buildings have waiting lists. Critics warn more surrounding towns will fall to Islamic influence until, one day, Islam spreads across the entire tri-state region. This seems to be the plan. During a Jordanian flag-raising ceremony in Paterson this April, a county commissioner vowed: “Inshallah (Allah willing), one day we will be able to raise these flags throughout all 16 municipalities in Passaic County.”

At the same April ceremony, Palestinian American Community Center’s Mustafa walked up to the podium and compared the Islamification of Paterson – and one day America as a whole – to the Muslim prophet Muhammad’s mass migration to, and subsequent Islamification of the Arabian city of Medina, which was an important milestone in Islam known as the “hijrah.” Though Muslims made up only 15% of the population in Medina, they nonetheless were able to turn it into an independent Islamic state, going from refugees to conquerors in a relatively short period.

Likewise, according to the late Islamic scholar Patrick Sookhdeo, modern-day Muslims are encouraged to establish their own institutions in Western lands, rather than adapting to those of their hosts, and to transform the demographic and political landscape of cities entirely, as their revered prophet did in Medina. Islamic leaders like Mustafa often refer to U.S. cities with large Muslim populations such as Paterson as “American Medina,” for becoming central hubs of Islamic identity and control.

Located just 15 miles west of Manhattan, Paterson is part of a metropolitan area that includes New York City, where Zohran Mamdani, a Muslim, is now mayor. The Muslim population grew at an astonishing rate in the metro area, rising from 1.6% in 2000 to 5% of the total population in 2020, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. The nearly 1 million Muslims now rival the estimated 1.3 million Jews residing in the metro area.

The Center for Security Policy maintains that an “electoral jihad” has already begun in the region. The Washington-based think tank notes that “radical” Muslim Adam Hamawy is now the prohibitive favorite to win the New Jersey seat in Congress representing the state’s heavily Democratic 12th Congressional District in November. Hamawy owes his success in large part both to the heavy Muslim turnout there in the recent Democratic primary and a flood of money from a new pro-Palestinian super PAC, American Priorities, which threw $1.6 million behind his candidacy. As RCI has reported, the PAC draws key funding from wealthy Muslims.

A former U.S. Army medical doctor, Hamawy won his June primary despite evidence that he once cozied up to notorious Al-Qaeda terrorist Omar Abdel-Rahman, better known as the “Blind Sheikh,” who masterminded the 1993 World Trade Center bombing. A vocal critic of Israel, Hamawy visited the al-Qaeda terrorist’s home and studied at his feet. He also acted as his translator and chauffeur at pro-jihad conferences, where the sheikh talked about “conquering the land of the infidels.” Hamawy testified as a defense witness for Abdel-Rahman at his trial.

His campaign says he now condemns the late sheikh’s terrorist activities and anti-American rhetoric.

Yet many family members of Americans murdered on 9/11 are upset that such candidates are taking over Democratic Party races and could gain access to U.S. military and counterterror intelligence as members of Homeland Security and other sensitive committees in Congress.

“This guy Hamawy is going to try and forget all about [his earlier association with a known al-Qaeda terrorist],” said Don Arias, a former New York firefighter whose brother worked in the South Tower on 9/11 and died in the al-Qaeda plane attacks on the World Trade Center.  “I’m not going to forget, and I don’t think people should forget.”

New York City

America’s most famous elected Muslim official, Zohran Mamdani, rode into office through strong support from New York’s largely immigrant Muslim community.

“The election of Mamdani is a game changer,” Yasir Qadhi, chairman of the influential Fiqh Council of North America, said in a sermon last year. “That is a victory for the Ummah.”

He also rejoiced in knowing that growing percentages of Muslims in Western cities are “terrifying” non-Muslim leaders. Noting such comments, Robert Spencer, a senior fellow with the David Horowitz Freedom Center, said that with Mamdani’s victory, “Muslim leaders are speaking openly now about the conquest and Islamization of the United States.”

Like members of rising immigrant groups before him, it is not surprising that Mamdani has appointed co-religionists to his team. What’s different, critics say, is that they tend to have connections to controversial policies and groups, including those tied to terrorism. An RCI analysis finds that Islamic activists now hold at least 10 high-ranking positions at Gotham’s city hall – starting with Ramzi Kassem. As the mayor’s top legal adviser, Kassem is in a position to influence the city’s anti-terror policies. It was Kassem who spearheaded the 2013 civil-rights lawsuit that three years later ended the NYPD’s surveillance of mosques and imams believed to be radicalizing young men to carry out violent jihad.

These days, Kassem won’t get as much pushback as he did last decade from the NYPD, which now boasts more than 3,500 active Muslim police officers– which is about 10% of the force, a figure in line with their citywide population. More than 40 Muslims are in NYPD leadership positions.

One of them is Pakistani-born Waheed Akhter, who was recently promoted from captain to the elite rank of deputy inspector of the NYPD. Akhter also acts as president of the NYPD Muslim Officers Society, whose website says it is “dedicated to building trust and improving relations between the Muslim community and the NYPD.”

Thanks to lobbying by this first-of-its-kind Muslim officers union, which also organizes annual pilgrimages to Mecca, NYPD now allows female officers to wear hijabs and male officers to wear turbans and kufi caps, as well as beards; Jewish officers are now allowed to wear yarmulkes. This year, NYPD hosted a Ramadan dinner at its headquarters.

Before joining the mayor’s office, the ethnic-Syrian Kassem was a pro bono attorney who defended al-Qaeda terrorists held at the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay. More recently, he represented Mahmoud Khalil, the Syrian-born ringleader of the antisemitic protest encampment at Columbia University who was detained by ICE and slated for deportation.

Instrumental in raising money from fellow Muslims and getting out their vote for Mamdani,  the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations now has some of its alumni represented in senior posts inside City Hall. One of them is Faiza Ali, who Mamdani appointed commissioner of his office for immigrant affairs, where she will distribute an additional $32 million a year in funds for housing, childcare and healthcare, as well as legal services – “in a major way,” she says – to immigrants facing deportation.

New York is already a sanctuary city, but Ali has vowed to strengthen protections for illegal immigrants.

“We are in a new era,” declared Ali, who was previously employed by CAIR’s New York office. She has already set up a confidential hotline in Arabic and Urdu for illegal immigrants to call for legal help. In addition, she is partnering with the Muslim Community Network and Arab American Family Support Center to hold “immigrant rights workshops” to help them “navigate interactions with ICE.”

Other Muslim activists serving in Mamdani’s cabinet include: Waleed Shahid, deputy communications director of economic justice; Mir Bashar, chief administrative officer; Ahmed Tijani, buildings commissioner; Zara Rahim, senior adviser; Nadia Shihata, commissioner of investigations; Sherif Soliman, budget director; former CAIR lawyer Bitta Mostofi, special adviser for strategic coordination and operations; Aliya Latif, executive director of the mayor’s office of faith-based partnerships; and Ali Najmi, who chairs the mayor’s advisory committee on the judiciary and will help pick city judges to ensure an “equitable legal system.”

These officials, in turn, are recruiting other Muslims to fill staff positions, ensuring an Islamic agenda will be prioritized over Mamdani’s four-year term in office. (NYC mayors are limited to two terms.)

“We are developing a cadre of political leadership in New York City,” Sarsour, the Islamic activist widely seen as one of Mamdani’s mentors, said in a recent interview. Before his election, she declared, “Our friends on the inside need people on the outside to hold them accountable. Voting for Zohran is not, ‘We’re going to vote for Zohran and just let him do whatever the hell he wants when he gets to City Hall.’”

Along with Sarsour, Ali and Latif, Najmi previously founded the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, an influential incubator for Muslim political candidates that blamed Israeli “oppression” for Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughter of Jews.

In 2021, the Muslim political club helped elect Shahana Hanif as the first Muslim woman on the New York City Council, where she caucuses with fellow Muslim council member Yusef Salaam. The pair has vowed to work closely with Mamdani to advance the interests of the Muslim community.

The Muslim club is now endorsing a slate of other Democratic candidates for state and federal offices ahead of the November elections, including 9/11 apologist, former CAIR operative and Palestinian activist Aber Kawas. The daughter of illegal aliens (her father was deported after criminal convictions), she is now the Democratic nominee for the New York State Senate District 12 and could become the legislature’s first Muslim woman. Also personally backed by Mamdani, Kawas has suggested the U.S. deserved to be attacked on 9/11 for “colonizing” Muslim lands.

When Muslim members of Mamdani’s administration joined him in observing Ramadan earlier this year, it signaled the start of an Islamic cultural revolution in the city, home to more than half a million Muslims who feel empowered by the ascension of one of their own. For the first time in New York’s history, more than 1,000 Muslim men took over Times Square, bowing prostrate on the ground in a mass pray-in, on the first night of Ramadan, the Islamic holy month.

While this can be seen as an example of pluralism and religious freedom, critics note that Mamdani broke his Ramadan fast with Mahmoud Khalil, whom he hosted for an Islamic dinner inside Gracie Mansion in March – even though the anti-Israel protester had attempted to justify the Oct. 7 massacre of Jews by Hamas. The mayor’s own wife, a Muslim of Syrian origin, has “liked” a variety of social media posts celebrating Oct. 7.

NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a photo of himself with Siraj Wahhaj, who appeared on a prosecutor’s preliminary list of unindicted co-conspirators in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.

Mamdani is not shy about rubbing shoulders with radical Islamists. Last year, he posted a photo of himself smiling and embracing Brooklyn Imam Siraj Wahhaj, who was investigated in connection with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case and appeared on a federal list of unindicted co-conspirators of the Blind Sheikh and Osama bin Laden.

A year before the deadly attack, Wahhaj told his flock: “If only Muslims were clever politically, they could take over the United States and replace its constitutional government with a caliphate.” He also said in a 1992 sermon: “If we go to war, brothers and sisters – and one day we will, believe me – that’s why you’re commanded [to fight in jihad]. When Allah demands us to fight, we’re not stopping and nobody’s stopping us.”

According to a transcript of the Brooklyn sermon obtained by the authors of “Muslim Mafia: Inside the Secret Underworld That’s Conspiring to Islamize America,” Wahhaj added: “I will never tell people, ‘Don’t be violent.’ That’s not the Islamic way.” To that end, he suggested recruiting New York street gangs and brandishing “9 millimeters and Uzis” for jihad. “These people have guts and courage that a lot of Muslims don’t have,” Wahhaj argued. “Some of these people are ready to stand in front of anyone and fight.”

The Islamic cleric has also preached that the Quran says Muslims should never take non-Muslims for friends and that homosexuals should be punished by death. Yet Mamdani recently called Wahhaj “one of the nation’s foremost Muslim leaders and a pillar of the community.”

The mayor’s office did not respond to requests for comment. Wahhaj, meanwhile, denies any connection to terrorism.

There’s more. Go here.