Mayor Adams appeared on the steps of Metropolis Corridor on Thursday for an occasion billed by his marketing campaign as a rally the place Muslim leaders would endorse him for reelection.
A few of the clerics even mentioned they don’t, because it seems, assist Adams’ reelection.
The flyer promoting the Eric Adams rally with Muslim leaders. (Obtained by Every day Information)
“We didn’t come here because we support him,” mentioned Mouhamed Mountakha Sakha, a group chief affiliated with the Islamic Cultural Basis of America mosque on Staten Island who introduced alongside a number of members of his congregation. “We were invited here because it’s Prophet Muhammad’s 1,500th birthday, so thinking that we came here to support the mayor — it’s not doing justice to Muslims … Politicians are politicians. Wherever they go, they will show their color.”
Even Adam Azam, a former state Senate candidate who helped manage the occasion and is supporting Adams’ reelection, mentioned it wasn’t alleged to be a political endorsement occasion.
“We only celebrated that,” Azam informed reporters of the prophet’s birthday. “This is not an event for any political campaign here.”
Moderately, the poster mentioned it will be a “historic gathering honoring the birth of Prophet Muhammad.” The poster had a emblem on it for the American Muslim Advocacy Community, an area group that didn’t instantly return a request for remark afterward.
In contrast, an Adams marketing campaign advisory for the occasion disseminated beforehand characterised it as a rally the place “leaders of New York City’s Muslim community and religious leaders will endorse Mayor Eric Adams for reelection during the annual Mawlid-un-Nabi festival at City Hall.”
Regardless that the advisory prompt in any other case, Adams marketing campaign spokesman Todd Shapiro insisted after the rally that it was a “community-organized religious event, not a campaign rally” and that the main target was Muhammad’s birthday.
Adams, who’s going through lengthy odds in November’s mayoral election operating as an impartial amid continued fallout from his corruption indictment, claimed reporters had been making an attempt to “divide” the Muslim leaders by asking them in regards to the occasion afterward.
“They have one agenda, one agenda: to divide us — that’s their only agenda,” Adams informed the group leaders as a few of them had been being interviewed by reporters, “So, no matter what you say to them they will distort it, so ignore all of that.”
In talking to reporters afterward, Sakha took explicit concern with Adams declining to say, when requested by a reporter through the occasion, whether or not he would think about holding a flag-raising occasion for Palestine amid Israel’s warfare in Gaza.
“I don’t think it’s right,” he mentioned. “There is no bigger concern for any free human for what is happening now in Gaza.”
The snafu for Adams comes on the heels of revelations that President Trump’s administration is making an attempt to supply him a job in an effort to get him to drop out of the mayoral race. The Trump staff’s effort, sources say, is aimed toward maximizing ex-Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s possibilities of beating Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani, who’s Muslim and presently the front-runner to win November’s election.
With Josephine Stratman
Initially Printed: September 4, 2025 at 7:48 PM EDT
