{"id":21209,"date":"2026-03-05T10:36:01","date_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:36:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=21209"},"modified":"2026-03-05T10:36:01","modified_gmt":"2026-03-05T10:36:01","slug":"mamdanis-religious-ties-to-the-iranian-regime","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/?p=21209","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani’s Religious Ties to the Iranian Regime"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n Reading Time:<\/span> 2<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Last year, we warned that then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was a radical Muslim, a follower of Twelver sect of Shia Islam. But did you know that Iran\u2019s leaders, including the recently deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are seen as the spiritual leaders of this sect?\n<\/p>\n

Pray for your fellow intercessor.<\/h4>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

From The National Pulse:\n<\/p>\n

New York City Mayor Zohran\u00a0Mamdani\u00a0(D) is a follower of the Twelver sect of Shia Islam. This sect counts Iran\u2019s\u00a0now-deceased\u00a0Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and the country\u2019s surviving ayatollahs as spiritual leaders, owed religious taxes\u00a0like\u00a0<\/span><\/span>khums<\/span><\/span><\/span>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/span><\/span>zakat by ordinary Twelvers.<\/span><\/span><\/span>\n<\/p>\n

Iqbal Akhtar,\u00a0<\/span>Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University, has\u00a0noted: \u201cThe Mamdani family\u2026 is part of the Twelver community\u2026 whose Twelfth Imam is\u00a0believed to be hidden\u00a0from the world and only emerges in times of crisis. Twelvers believe he will help usher in an age of peace during end times.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Though this Imam, Muhammad al-Mahdi, is said to have disappeared into hiding in 874 AD, the Ayatollahs of Iran have taken up the mantle of leadership for the Twelver community.<\/p>\n

The Twelver sect is explicitly tied to Iran. In fact, Robert Spencer, head of JihadWatch, reportedly described the sect as the \u201cofficial religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran,\u201d according to the Pulse. This is likely because, as the Pulse notes, Ruhollah Khomeini, the first Supreme Leader of Iran, declared himself to be the spiritual leader of the Twelver sect in 1979.\n<\/p>\n

Mayor Mamdani\u2019s family is also explicitly tied to both this sect and Iran. According to the Iran International website, the Mayor\u2019s aunt was a staunch supported of Khomeini. The Mayor\u2019s father was also a supporter, though seemingly a less zealous one. According to an Iranian University professor who met Mayor Mamdani\u2019s father, his father claimed he was often criticized by his family for not showing \u201cthe devotion to Khomeini that I\u2019m supposed to.\u201d\n<\/p>\n

Perhaps these ties to the Iranian regime are what prevented Mayor Mamdani from supporting the U.S. strikes on Iran. The Mayor was quick to condemn the strikes on social media, writing that the attack marks \u201ca catastrophic escalation in an illegal war of aggression. Bombing cities. Killing civilians. Opening a new theater of war. \u00a0Americans do not want this.\u201d Mayor Mamdani has since condemned the government of Iran, but he has refused to say whether the Iranian people are better off without the Supreme Leader or not.\n<\/p>\n

It is unclear how deep these ties between Mayor Mamdani, his Muslim faith, and ruling elite in Iran go. Regardless, let\u2019s continue to ask God to soften the Mayor\u2019s heart and lead him to both support our nation and condemn the dangerous Islamic regime in Iran!\n<\/p>\n

What do you think of this? Share your prayers for Mayor Mamdani below.<\/h4>\n

(Excerpt from The National Pulse. Photo Credit: Metropolitan Transportation Authority \u2013 https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/mtaphotos\/55026108338\/, CC BY 4.0, https:\/\/commons.wikimedia.org\/w\/index.php?curid=184787257)
\n \n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: 2 minutes Last year, we warned that then-mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani was a radical Muslim, a follower of Twelver sect of Shia Islam. But did you know that Iran\u2019s leaders, including the recently deceased Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, are seen as the spiritual leaders of this sect? Pray for your fellow intercessor. \u00a0 From<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[4492,1498,3587,91,1118],"class_list":["post-21209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-prayer","tag-iranian","tag-mamdanis","tag-regime","tag-religious","tag-ties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=21209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/21210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=21209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=21209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/biblelon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=21209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}