A hardline socialist who’s the favorite to be the next mayor of New York City has debunked his own story that claimed his Muslim aunt was too scared to ride the subway after 9/11.
Zohran Mamdani said Monday that he was actually referring to one of his father’s distant dead cousins, a woman he named only as Zehra.
Mamdani, 33, made the revelation at a press conference as he sought to get ahead of the debacle ahead of the November 4 mayoral election.
‘I was speaking about Zehra fuhi, my father’s cousin, who passed away a few years ago,’ he said. Fuhi stands for paternal aunt in Urdu and Hindi.
Last week, Mamdani fought back tears as he told of how the September 2001 terror atrocity had left an aunt who wears a hijab too scared to use public transport in New York City.
‘I want to speak to the memory of my aunt, who stopped taking the subway after September 11 because she did not feel safe in her hijab,’ he said.
But internet sleuths quickly discovered that Mamdani’s only living aunt, a woman called Masuma Mamdani, lived in Tanzania at the time of the September 2001 terror attacks.
An online photo further revealed that Masuma does not wear a headscarf.
Relatives of 9/11 victims also criticized him over the comments, suggesting they were ‘insulting and insensitive’ and amounted to ‘lunacy.’
Terry Strada’s husband Tom, 41, a Cantor Fitzgerald bond broker, died after going to work on the 104th floor of the North Tower. The youngest of their three children was just four days old.
She branded a Mamdani a ‘despicable liar’ after he changed his story on Monday.
She told the Daily Mail: ‘I find what he (Mamdani) had to say completely insulting to all of the people that suffered a horrible loss that day.
‘To compare an aunt being uncomfortable on the subway to all of these families that were murdered was just very insensitive and shows his true colors.
‘How dare he lie about 9/11 to invoke sympathy from Muslims. New York suffered horrible losses from a terrorist attack carried out by radical Islamists. He is a despicable liar and this should open everyone’s eyes to who he truly is.’
She said Mamdani should apologize, but didn’t think he would.