PULSE POINTS
WHAT HAPPENED: New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani identifies as a follower of Twelver Shia Islam, the same sect as Iran’s ruling ayatollahs.
WHO WAS INVOLVED: Mayor Zohran Mamdani, the Iranian regime, and Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse.
KEY QUOTE: Twelver Muslims “believe that to this day there is a 1,200-year-old living prophet on Earth who is in hiding and is going to come out at some point soon, and proselytize Islam the world over,” Kassam noted last year.
IMPACT: The media has been criticized for ignoring Mamdani’s religious beliefs and their implications.
IN FULL
New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani (D) is a follower of the Twelver sect of Shia Islam. This sect counts Iran’s now-deceased Supreme Leader, Grand Ayatollah Khamenei, and the country’s surviving ayatollahs as spiritual leaders, owed religious taxes like khums and zakat by ordinary Twelvers.
Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Florida International University, has noted: “The Mamdani family… is part of the Twelver community… whose Twelfth Imam is believed to be hidden from the world and only emerges in times of crisis. Twelvers believe he will help usher in an age of peace during end times.”
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.
Robert Spencer, head of the JihadWatch group, has described the sect as the official religion of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Raheem Kassam, Editor-in-Chief of The National Pulse, explained on former White House Chief Strategist Stephen K. Bannon’s WarRoom show last June 2025 that Twelver Muslims like Mamdani and Khamenei “believe that to this day there is a 1,200-year-old living prophet on Earth who is in hiding and is going to come out at some point soon, and proselytize Islam the world over.”
Kassam has accused the corporate media of completely ignoring the relevance of Mamdani’s extremist beliefs, which are even more relevant now in like of the U.S. being at war with the mullahs, saying “I’ve yet to hear any reporters on the campaign trail in New York put these questions to him and say, ‘Hey… do you really believe in this stuff?’”
Mamdani is a communist, yeah yeah yeah.
What is more interesting is his bizarre religious beliefs.
Can you imagine if a Christian in public life believed things like this? They’d be dragged on every late-night show. pic.twitter.com/UQOlMW1swo
— Raheem J. Kassam (@RaheemKassam) June 25, 2025
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The post DID YOU KNOW: Iran’s Ayatollahs Are The Spiritual Heads of Mamdani’s Sect of Islam? appeared first on The National Pulse.
