Terror in Mamdani’s New York

By Rich Lowry

Tuesday, March 10, 2026

 

It’s hard to get a more perfect metaphor for our times than a leftist braying on his bullhorn at a protest about how welcoming New York City is, then having a jihadist throw a bomb directly over his back.

 

That’s what happened to progressive influencer Walter Masterson last weekend when he was telling far-right provocateur Jake Lang a thing or two about New York values — before getting interrupted by an act of Islamic terrorism.

 

Irving Kristol famously said that “a neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.”

 

What’s a preachy left-winger who has nearly become a victim of a mass-casualty event?

 

Masterson’s brush with potentially serious injury or death has caused him . . . to keep inveighing against Jake Lang.

 

During the French Revolution, they said “pas d’ennemis à gauche,” or “no enemies to the left.”

 

It shows an extraordinary commitment to this approach not to get overly worked up about someone yelling “Allahu akbar” and almost blowing you up with a bunch of other people. But hey: Some people in New York City throw bombs, and others don’t. Diversity is our strength!

 

None of this is to deny that Jake Lang, a pardoned January 6 rioter, is a poisonous toad. He was leading a small, buffoonish demonstration against the supposed takeover of New York City by Muslims when the attack happened. It’s just that engaging in First Amendment–protected activity is not in the same moral universe as trying to kill people.

 

Someone might want to get word to Mayor Zohran Mamdani. His initial statement on the episode began with a strong condemnation of Lang by name and went on to say that, yes, throwing bombs is bad, too. “Violence at a protest is never acceptable,” he wrote.

 

Mamdani didn’t name the perpetrators, note that they were attempting to kill Lang, or call out their Islamic extremism.

 

The mayor’s narrative of Islamic victimhood runs so deep that it is presumably hard for him to process that two Muslim men were more hateful and dangerous than their right-wing adversaries.

 

In a better world, Mamdani would have a lot of credibility condemning the threat represented by Islamic extremism and backing Muslims who are in the trenches against the radicalism represented by the alleged bomb throwers, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi.

 

All indications are that they are true fanatics. According to the federal criminal complaint, Balat told the cops when they had detained him and were transporting him to the precinct that “this isn’t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet.” No, he declared: “We take action!”

 

About that he was indisputably correct. At the precinct, he asked for a pen and paper so he could pledge his allegiance to ISIS in writing. “Die in rage [you] kuffar,” he added, using an ISIS slogan and the Arabic word, “kuffar,” for nonbeliever.

 

Asked whether he wanted to commit another Boston Marathon massacre, he said, “No, bigger. It was only three deaths.”

 

Both Balat and Kayumi are the children of immigrants and another indication that the assimilative apparatus in the United States is far from perfect. Even if we become flawless at vetting immigrants from trouble spots around the globe — the duo’s parents are from Turkey and Afghanistan — there’s no way to screen for children who will be so profoundly alienated from American society that they will seek to strike violent blows against it.

 

If someone had predicted that Islamic zealots would be lighting bombs on the streets of Zohran Mamdani’s New York City and shouting “Allahu akbar,” before trying to carry out a massacre worse than the 2013 Boston Marathon, the mayor and others on the left surely would have considered it a sick right-wing fantasy. How dare they try to divide us with such rank prejudice? But this really happened, and they should adjust their worldview accordingly, if they don’t want to keep getting mugged — or even worse — by reality.