New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani (D.) has developed a close relationship with an influential Muslim sheikh in Queens with a history of Holocaust denial, the Washington Free Beacon can reveal.
Mamdani has met with Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani, imam of the Al-Khoei Islamic Center in Jamaica, Queens, on at least three occasions since January 2025—despite the cleric’s past statements casting doubt on the Jewish death toll from the Holocaust and on the Holocaust being reasonable cause for establishing the state of Israel.
“It feels like returning home to be here,” Mamdani said during his most recent known visit to the sheikh’s mosque during Ramadan celebrations in February.
Photos from the event show Mamdani with a broad smile, warmly shaking Al-Sahlani’s hand.
The sheikh, a native of Iraq, has wielded influence from his perch in Queens for decades and has participated in events with previous New York City mayors, including Eric Adams and Michael Bloomberg.
But in January 2006, during an interview with the New York Sun, Al-Sahlani told the paper that the figure of six million Jews killed in the Holocaust “has been exaggerated.”
“The numbers which have been mentioned are too much,” Al-Sahlani told Sun reporter Russell Berman. “The numbers, the reasons, we have to study more.”
The sheikh had been asked about the Holocaust following similar statements from Iran’s fiery then-president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who called the Holocaust a “myth” contrived to justify the establishment of Israel, which he said should be “wiped off the map.”
Sheikh Al-Sahlani, according to the Sun, “voiced his support for Iran’s proposal to hold a conference on the Holocaust in Tehran, saying there is ‘nothing wrong with studying more.'”
Ahmadinejad’s now-notorious Iranian conference, called the “International Conference to Review the Global Vision of the Holocaust,” took place in December 2006 in Tehran and attracted Holocaust deniers from around the world, some of whom used their skepticism about the Holocaust to cast doubt on Israel’s legitimacy.
When the Sun asked Al-Sahlani about Ahmadinejad’s desire for the destruction of Israel, the sheikh waxed poetic.
“It is a kind of dream,” he said. “But we have to be realistic. Even we have to accept a fact that we don’t like.”
The Imam did concede the killing of innocent Jews during World War II had been “an injustice.”
The Sun said they had surveyed more than a dozen other Muslim leaders—all of whom denounced Ahmadinejad, with some calling his comments “irresponsible” or “offensive.”
The sheikh’s comments made significant waves at the time.
“I find this both offensive and outrageous,” Queens assemblyman Brian M. McLaughlin told the Sun in a follow-up article in April—vowing to rescind a $1,000 grant to the Imam.
In a follow-up interview with BeliefNet in April 2006, the author Walter Ruby said he didn’t trust the Sun‘s conservative bent and wanted to speak to the sheikh himself. “I went to see Al-Sahlani last week predisposed to believe that he might have been treated unfairly by the Sun, or, at least, deserved a chance to set the record straight,” Ruby wrote. “Yet his responses to me only deepened the hole he dug for himself in the original interview.”
Indeed, Al-Sahlani said in his interview with Ruby that, “There are great scholars—specialists in the Holocaust—who do not believe what the other group of people believe…They say the number of victims is less than six million. Some of them say the reason for the Holocaust was (that it was) done by the Zionists.”
Al-Sahlani told Ruby he couldn’t remember the names of the “great scholars,” but when Ruby asked him if one of them was David Irving, the discredited British Nazi apologist, Al-Sahlani replied, “Yes, I believe that is the person, and probably there are others.”
At the time he referred to Irving, the disgraced academic was sitting in a prison cell in Austria after being convicted of Holocaust denial.
In addition to engaging in Holocaust denial, Al-Sahlani has also celebrated Palestinian terrorism—a position which has become de rigueur for many close to Mamdani—including Mamdani’s wife.
On November 3, 2023, less than a month after Hamas’s October slaughter, Sheikh Al-Sahlani lauded the effort.
“One movement can make a great change,” he declaimed from the pulpit. “What we are witnessing is that one movement, Hamas, has made a big difference not only for the Arab Muslim world, but the whole world, the whole world, mashallah.”
Footage of the remarks remains live and is easily accessible on the Imam Al-Khoei Foundation, NY YouTube page. “Mashallah” means “Allah has willed it.”
After his 2006 interview with the sheikh, Ruby lamented that, “I am saddened that publication of this article may further deepen Al-Sahlani’s isolation from the American religious and political mainstream. Rather than shunning this pious and upright man, who is a source of spiritual inspiration for the nearly 3000 members of the Al-Khoei Islamic Center, would it not be preferable for Jewish and Christian leaders to reach out to Al-Sahlani in the hope that sustained communication will convince him of the moral squalor of belittling the genocide of six million Jews?”
But Ruby was wrong—far from marginal, Al-Sahlani’s stature has only grown with the election of Mamdani, the city’s first Muslim mayor.
Mamdani’s “homecoming” February visit to the sheikh’s mosque followed two other trips across Queens to see Al-Sahlani in January 2025 and July 2025, public records show.
In August 2025, Mamdani also took part in a fundraiser hosted at the Long Island home of the Al-Khoei Foundation’s representative to the United Nations, Syed Meesam Razvi.
In a 2020 interview with a fact-checker at Reuters, Al-Sahlani disputed the Sun article, telling the wire service: “at no time and under no circumstances did I mention that the tragedy of [the] Holocaust is not true, nor did I ever question the historical facts relating to the number of Jews killed during the Second World War.”
But when reached by phone by the Free Beacon on Wednesday, Al-Sahlani declined to discuss his past statements about the Holocaust.
“It’s really difficult to talk with you people, because you change some statement and you put a very big what you call headline for a speech … but you just want to make it a bigger story. So I don’t comment on that one,” Al-Sahlani said.
When asked if the Oct. 7 attacks had been a good thing, Al-Sahlani responded, “I don’t know.” He said he had not attended Ahmadinejad’s Holocaust conference and does not have a close relationship with Mamdani.
In a statement to the Free Beacon, Mamdani spokesman Sam Raskin said the mayor condemned the sheikh’s words—but not the sheikh himself.
“Sheikh Fadhel Al-Sahlani’s Holocaust denial and comments about Hamas are diametrically opposed to the mayor’s values and everything he has said and stood for,” Raskin said. “Like many elected officials, the mayor has visited many houses of worship and religious institutions across New York City. No visit should ever be construed as an endorsement of every statement made by every individual affiliated with those institutions.”
Raskin directed the Free Beacon to a 2021 tweet in which Mamdani wrote that, “We mourn & honor the memories of the 6 million Jews & millions of Romani, queer, & disabled people murdered by the Nazis.” City Hall also pointed out that Adams and Bloomberg had visited the imam’s mosque.
Mamdani is far from the only city pol who has been glad-handing the Holocaust denier.
Darializa Avila Chevalier, an anti-Israel, Democratic Socialists of America-backed candidate making a primary challenge to Rep. Adriano Espaillat (D.) in New York City’s 13th congressional district, addressed the Al-Khoei Islamic Center on March 6, 2026, where she recounted her conversion to Islam three years earlier.
In February, Chevalier also attended a fundraiser hosted at the Long Island home of Syed Meesam Razvi.
The Al-Khoei Foundation also has had financial connections to Islamic radicalism. According to tax forms, the group has received funding in the past from the Alavi Foundation, a charity originally established by the shah that U.S. officials later linked to the Iranian regime that overthrew him.
In March 2026, a settlement dissolved the Alavi Foundation and required $318 million to be paid to victims of Iranian-sponsored terrorism from its assets.
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