Free Republic

Evocative of that infamous 2019 Washington Post article that described the recently-deceased ISIS killer Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as an “austere religious scholar” who displayed “canny pragmatism” during his reign of terror, candidate for New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani recently posted a photo to social media showing him cheerily embracing a man by the name of Siraj Wahhaj (real name Jeffrey Kearse), a Muslim imam who has a long history of raising funds for convicted killers with terrorist ideologies, calling the experience “pleasure” and referring to Wahhaj as a “leader” and “pillar” of the community:Today at Masjid At-Taqwa, I had...

Already missing from the news cycle is the story of Muslim leader Siraj Wahhaj, who alerted authorities to the squalid conditions in New Mexico in which his son, two daughters, another man and woman, and 11 children were living.Authorities arrived at the compound to some of the most horrifying conditions they had ever seen, and prosecutors identified the makeshift home as a training ground for militant children, including in carrying out school shootings. The imam’s son had been wanted for kidnapping his own four-year-old child, who had severe disabilities. The body of a young child was recovered from the...