A Brooklyn Muslim cleric who once worked with New York City Mayor Eric Adams on a campaign to end hate is now spreading hatred by calling for the annihilation of Israel, The Washington Post has learned.
Meanwhile, one of his colleagues at a Bronx mosque began blasting Christians as “Zionist Hollywood” and accusing them of packing churches with LGBTQ worshippers to bolster their dwindling congregations.
As the war between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip continues, Sheikh Muhammad al-Bahr, imam of the Bay Ridge Mosque, called on Allah to “liberate Palestine from the occupiers and plunderers” during Friday prayers earlier this month.
“May God destroy those who have occupied their lands, those who have betrayed and abandoned them, and those who have shed their blood,” al-Bahr spoke in Arabic at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge’s Masjid bin Umair on August 12.
The video of al-Bahr’s sermon was posted last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a think tank whose advisers include religious leaders such as human rights activist Natan Sharansky and lawyer and former diplomat Stuart Eisenstat.
Al-Bahr, whose surname can also be spelled “El-Bahr”, is a member of the Mujahideen [Hamas fighters] “Our Arab armies in Gaza have achieved greater success than our Arab armies achieved in the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War of 1967 and 1973,” they respectively noted.
“Muhammad al-Bahr explains how Hamas has achieved what the Egyptian and Syrian Arab Armies were unable to do in 1967 and 1973,” Yigal Karmon, MEMRI’s president and founder, said in an interview with The Post on Monday.
“He ignores one thing: Hamas used civilians as human shields. Imam fully supports a terrorist organization in the heart of New York and completely ignores how October 7th began.”
On the same day last year, a Hamas terrorist attack on Israel left more than 1,200 people dead and 240 hostages kidnapped.
Adams joined forces. In April 2017, he joined the Bay Ridge Mosque and numerous elected officials in a campaign to combat hatred against the Muslim community when he was Brooklyn’s borough president.
“Any attack on one religious life is an attack on all religious ways of life,” Adams said during a prayer service at the Bay Ridge mosque. “We are ready to welcome all groups here in the borough.”
It is unclear whether Adams has remained in contact with Al-Bahr since then. The mayor’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.
The pro-Hamas remarks in Bay Ridge Islamic Center of Rockland County He called for the “destruction of Zionist Jewry,” according to a translation by MEMRI TV.
“Oh Allah, seize them with overwhelming force,” the unnamed imam continued.
A Rockland County mosque has apologized for a sermon by a visiting imam following complaints from local Jewish groups and elected officials.
“On August 9, during a sermon at our mosque, a guest imam made several hurtful comments, including praying to God for the destruction of Zionist Jews as part of the Gaza conflict,” the Islamic center said in a statement.
“We firmly condemn these comments. We sincerely apologize for any distress they have caused, and will ensure that our platform will not be used to spread such harmful messages in the future.”
Live Stream At a July rally at the American Muslim Association’s Bronx Muslim Center, an unidentified imam said Christians and Jews are jealous of Muslims and that Christians are forced to accept LGBTQ people into their churches to increase their numbers.
“It’s better to let gays into the church because believers are leaving the church, normal people won’t come, so we have to fill it with them,” the anonymous imam said, adding that Muslims are “the best people” and that’s why Jews want to kill them.
“There is a reason why they are jealous of us, my brothers and sisters,” the imam continued, “we are the best nation and the Jews are no longer… They cannot understand that it is wrong to slaughter innocent children, men and women.” [They say] “‘We are looking for terrorists’. But they are terrorists. May Allah destroy our enemies.”
The Bronx imam also warned his congregation against Hollywood’s “Zionist-owned” entertainment industry, saying “all your musicians are under contract to these Zionists,” and against taking children to Disney amusement parks.
“Are you going to take them to Disney?” he said. “Forget the Zionism part, what about the Satanism part?”
Watchdog groups condemned the violent rhetoric
“There’s an ulterior motive behind this Bronx imam’s claim that Christians are turning to ‘LGBT’ believers as churches lose support,” said Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Monitoring Project.
“He and Islamists across America worry that American Islam has been diluted over the years by embracing left-wing allies too strongly. They now fear that young Muslims across the country are increasingly embracing ‘LGBT’ and other ‘progressive’ phenomena. Their duplicitous extremism is backfired.”
The Muslim American Association, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit that oversees the Bronx Muslim Center, did not respond to a request for comment Monday, nor did the Islamic Association of Bay Ridge.
