{"id":644345,"date":"2026-03-10T00:19:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:19:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/644345\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T00:19:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T00:19:11","slug":"mamdani-gets-mugged-by-reality-after-isis-bombers-target-nyc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/644345\/","title":{"rendered":"Mamdani gets mugged by reality \u2014 after ISIS bombers target NYC"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s 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<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happened to progressive influencer Walter Masterson Saturday when he was telling far-right provocateur Jake Lang a thing or two about New York values \u2014 before getting interrupted by an act of Islamic terrorism<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Irving Kristol famously said that \u201ca neoconservative is a liberal who has been mugged by reality.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

What\u2019s a preachy left-winger who has nearly become a victim of a mass-casualty event?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Masterson\u2019s brush with potentially serious injury or death has caused him . . . to keeping inveighing against Jake Lang.\u00a0<\/p>\n

During the French Revolution, they said \u201cpas d\u2019ennemis \u00e0 gauche,\u201d or \u201cno enemies to the left.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

It shows an extraordinary commitment to this approach not to get overly worked up about someone yelling \u201cAllah Akbar\u201d and almost blowing you up with a bunch of other people.<\/p>\n

But, hey: Some people in New York City throw bombs, and others don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Diversity is our strength!<\/p>\n

None of this is to deny that Jake Lang, a pardoned Jan. 6 rioter, is a poisonous toad.<\/p>\n

He was leading a small, buffoonish demonstration against the supposed takeover of New York City by Muslims when the attack happened.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s just that engaging in First Amendment-protected activity is not in the same moral universe as trying to kill people.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Someone might want to get word to Mayor Zohran Mamdani<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

\u201cViolence at a protest is never acceptable,\u201d he wrote.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mamdani didn\u2019t name the perpetrators, note that they were attempting to kill Lang, or call out their Islamic extremism.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The mayor\u2019s narrative of Islamic victimhood<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

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 bomb-throwers, Emir Balat and Ibrahim Kayumi. \u00a0<\/p>\n

All indications are that they are true fanatics<\/a>.<\/p>\n

According to the federal criminal complaint, Balat told the cops when they had detained him and were transporting him to the precinct that \u201cthis isn\u2019t a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet.\u201d<\/p>\n

No, he declared: \u201cWe take action!\u201d<\/p>\n

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About that he was indisputably correct.<\/p>\n

At the precinct, he asked for a pen and paper so he could pledge his allegiance to ISIS in writing.<\/p>\n

\u201cDie in rage [you] kuffar,\u201d he added, using an ISIS slogan and Arabic word, \u201ckuffar,\u201d for non-believer.<\/p>\n

Asked whether he wanted to commit another Boston Marathon massacre, he said, \u201cNo, bigger. It was only three deaths.\u201d<\/p>\n

Both Balat and Kayumi are the children of immigrants<\/a>, and another indication that the assimilative apparatus in the United States is far from perfect.<\/p>\n

Even if we become flawless at vetting immigrants from trouble spots around the globe \u2014 the duo\u2019s parents are from Turkey and Afghanistan \u2014 there\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

If someone had predicted that Islamic zealots would be lighting bombs on the streets of Zohran Mamdani\u2019s New York City and shouting \u201cAllah Akbar\u201d before trying to carry out a massacre worse than that at the 2013 Boston Marathon<\/a>, the mayor and others on the left surely would have considered it a sick right-wing fantasy.<\/p>\n

How dare they try to divide us with such rank prejudice?<\/p>\n

But this really happened, and they should adjust their worldview accordingly if they don\u2019t want to keep getting mugged \u2014 or even worse \u2014 by reality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

X: @RichLowry<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s hard to get a more perfect metaphor for our times than a leftist braying on his bullhorn…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":644346,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[5122],"tags":[5229,6984,133507,273980,405,403,5226,5225,5228,5227,1269,82061,67,586,132,5230,68,2969,5301],"class_list":["post-644345","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-america","tag-bombs","tag-isis","tag-islamists","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-newyork","tag-newyorkcity","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-opinion","tag-terrorists","tag-united-states","tag-united-states-of-america","tag-unitedstates","tag-unitedstatesofamerica","tag-us","tag-usa","tag-zohran-mamdani"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/116202016980673358","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644345","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644345"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644345\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644346"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644345"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644345"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644345"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}