Extreme rhetoric in New York mosques as Imams call for destruction of Israel, praise Hamas

A Brooklyn Muslim cleric who once partnered with New York Mayor Eric Adams on a campaign to end hate is now spreading it by calling for the annihilation of Israel, The NewYork Post reported on Monday.

Meanwhile, one of his counterparts at a mosque in the Bronx has taken to blasting “Zionist Hollywood” and Christians for packing their churches with LGBTQ worshippers, whom he claims they are recruiting to bolster dwindling congregations.

As the Israeli war against Hamas in Gaza continues, imam Sheikh Muhammad Al-Barr, called on Allah at his Bay Ridge mosque to “liberate Palestine from the occupiers and the plunderers” during a Friday service earlier this month.

“Oh Allah, annihilate those who occupied their lands, and those who betrayed and deserted them, and those who spilled their blood,” Al-Barr said in Arabic August 12 at the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge’s Masjid ibn Umair.

Society of Bay Ridge in 2017. Adams was Brooklyn Borough President at the time and his visit was part of a campaign to end religious hatred. Al-Barr is the only person featured in the picture who now stands accused of using hate speech.

The video of Al-Barr’s sermon was posted last week by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a think tank that features human rights activist Natan Sharansky and lawyer and former diplomat Stuart Eizenstat, among other religious leaders on their board of advisors.

Al-Barr, whose last name is also spelled “Elbar,” also said that “the mujahideen [Hamas fighters] in Gaza are achieving more than our Arab armies could in 1967 and 1973,” a reference to the Six Day War and the Yom Kippur War, respectively.

“Muhammad Al-Barr explains how…Hamas managed to do what the Arab armies of Egypt and Syria …did not do in 1967 and 1973,” said Yigal Carmon, president and founder of MEMRI in an interview with The Post Monday.

“He ignores one thing: How Hamas used the population as human shields…The imam shows total support for a terrorist organization in the heart of New York and totally ignores how October 7 began.”

More than 1,200 died and 240 hostages were kidnapped during the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on that date last year.

Adams joined forces with the Bay Ridge mosque and a host of elected officials in April 2017 in a campaign to combat hate against the Muslim community. At the time he was Brooklyn Borough President.

An unnamed and as-yet unidentified cleric at the Islamic Center of Rockland County spreading a hateful sermon against Christians, Jewish people, the LGBTQ community and the Disney corporation.

The Rockland County mosque later apologized for the imam’s words after complaints from Jewish groups and local leaders.

“Any attack on one religious life is an attack on all religious ways of life,” said Adams in comments at a prayer service at the Bay Ridge mosque. “Right here in the borough, we have a welcome mat for all groups.”

It is unclear if Adams has since had any contact with Al-Barr. In response to a request for comment a spokesperson said: “The mayor has been abundantly clear that hate has no place in our city, whether it be antisemitism, Islamophobia, or any other form of bigotry.

“Our houses of worship are places where people go to heal and connect spiritually and should never be a place to attack others or call for violence.”

The pro-Hamas comments in Bay Ridge came three days after an imam at the Islamic Center of Rockland County called for “the destruction of the Zionist Jews,” according to a translation by MEMRI TV.

“Oh Allah, seize them with a crushing grip,” the unnamed imam continued.

The Rockland County mosque apologized for the visiting imam’s sermon following complaints from local Jewish groups and elected officials.

“On August 9, during a sermon at our masjid, a guest imam delivered several hurtful statements that included a prayer to God for the destruction of Zionist Jews as part of the conflict in Gaza,” the Islamic Center said in a statement.

“We unequivocally condemn these statements. We sincerely apologize for any pain caused by these remarks and will ensure that our platform is not used to promote these types of harmful messages going forward.”

In a live stream at the Muslim America Society’s Bronx Muslim Center in July, an unidentified imam said that Christians and Jews were jealous of Muslims, and that Christians were forced to allow LGBTQ into churches to bolster their numbers.

“Because your congregation is leaving, you would rather get the homosexuals inside your churches because the regular people aint coming, so you have to fill them in with them,” said the unnamed imam, adding that Muslims “are the best of nations” and that’s why Jews want to kill them.

“My brothers and sisters, they have reasons to be jealous of us,” the imam continued. “We are the best of nations, those Jews ain’t it anymore…They can’t see that slaughtering innocent children, men and women is wrong. [They say] ‘We’re looking for the terrorists.’ Meanwhile they are the terrorists. May Allah destroy our enemies.”

The Bronx imam also warned the congregation against the “Zionist owned” entertainment industry in Hollywood — “all these musicians of yours have contracts with these Zionists” — and warned against taking children to Disney amusement parks.

“Are you going to take them to Disney?” he said. “Forget the Zionism part of it, what about the Satanic part?”

A watchdog group condemned the violent rhetoric

Various groups gathered to protest the war between Israel and Hamas outside the White House in Washington, DC on the day Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu visited with President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Anthony Blinken on July 25.

“There is a subtext to this imam in the Bronx claiming Christians are turning to ‘LGBT’ congregants as the churches lose support,” said Sam Westrop, director of the Middle East Forum’s Islamist Watch project.

“He and other Islamists across America worry that American Islam has suffered years of dilution from embracing leftist allies too tightly. Now they fear Islamic youth across the country are increasingly embracing ‘LGBT’ and other ‘progressivist’ phenomena as well. Their duplicitous radicalism has backfired.”

The Muslim American Society, a Washington DC-based non-profit which oversees the Bronx Muslim Center, did not return a request for comment Monday, nor did the Islamic Society of Bay Ridge.