We have to start with a hat tip to this woman for bringing this to our attention, although her characterization of it was slightly inaccurate:
She is apparently a Democrat who supports Israel and hates Antisemitism (she describes herself as ‘anti-antisemitic’)—so we guess she is in the John Fetterman wing of the Democratic Party? Heh.
Furthermore, that image is actually from our sister site Hot Air, from Monday’s Final Word:
And rather than blowing up the image, we will quote the relevant passage, which summarized reporting from another source:
WABC Radio: In a piece for his college newspaper about his time studying in Cairo, [Zohran] Mamdani wrote that at those protests, women ‘had to contend with the very real threat of sexual harassment and assault, especially at night.’
He namechecked two groups of civilian volunteers engaged in blocking, stopping, and reporting rapes, and said he ‘thought of volunteering.’
However, Mamdani declined to intervene to stop rapes and sexual assaults not because of concerns about his own personal safety, or legalities, but rather because he concluded that ‘that the last thing Egyptians needed was a well-meaning foreigner’s assistance.’
The revelations could raise further questions about whether Mamdani is the right candidate to take on violent crime in New York City, and come in the wake of Mamdani attempting to walk back his 2020 comments that the New York Police Department was ‘a major threat to public safety.’
Hot Air’s own Ed Morrissey writes:
Good Lord. And this is the SECOND biggest embarrassment for Democrats in this election cycle.
In any case, Hot Air cited WABC Radio, and that in turn cited, Mamdami’s own writings:
It comes from a piece called ‘Bearded In Cairo’ in a publication called ‘The Bowdoin Orient’ and rather than blowing up the picture, we will quote the text:
Yet, while many traditional social divisions fell, the barrier of gender remained. Although I saw many women at the protest, and at protests in the days ahead, they had to contend with the very real threat of sexual harassment and assault, especially at night. @OpAntiSH and @TahrirBG_DWB are two groups that strive to disrupt attempted assaults and are present at most major protests in the square, with the former reporting an average of dozens of assaults at the end of a night of protest. Enraged by the stories and statistics, I thought of volunteering only to come to the realization that the last thing Egyptians needed was a well-meaning foreigner’s assistance.
So you got that? There were groups of people who would basically do vigilantism to protect women from sexual assault and rape. We don’t use the word 'vigilantism' in a critical fashion. Not all vigilantism is automatically bad or illegal in America, contrary to popular myth. The behavior Mamdani is describing sounds like it would probably be legal in America, and commendable as reasonable force in defense of others. Thus, these people were out there trying to protect women from rape, and Mamdani refused to join them.
But that’s what it is galling is Mamdani’s reason for refusing to get involved. Look, we might be sympathetic if he was afraid of getting killed or arrested by unsympathetic police—we said it would be legal in America but we don’t pretend to know what the rules are in other countries when it comes to defense of others. But to refuse to help a person because supposedly Egyptians didn’t need the assistance of a foreigner is madness and a serious moral failing. Apparently being an alleged African American was not enough: He had to be a native Egyptian.
Seriously, does he believe that an Egyptian woman, facing rape or assault, would refuse any person’s help, foreign or not? Does he picture her saying ‘I’m sorry, but you are a natural born Ugandan citizen of Indian parents and not an Egyptian, so I guess I will let these men rape me’? It’s wokeness taken to an extreme and ridiculous level.
Trinity, for her part, had more to say on the subject:
Trinity responded to Kelly with some naughty, naughty words, so we will only be quoting her, with censorship: ‘Yeah I do remember and that was also f—ked up and wrong’
The cut off text:
This stems from an article published in The McGill Daily on February 7, 2013, where Mamdani, then a student, recounted his experiences during the 2012-2013 protests in Cairo against the Muslim Brotherhood. In the piece, he described observing sexual assaults on women in Tahrir Square but refrained from acting, citing a belief that intervention by a foreigner might be perceived as imposing external values or undermining local agency. The exact quote attributed to him in the post—’that the last thing Egyptians needed was a well-meaning foreigner’s assistance’—aligns with the tone and context of his written reflection.
This is an interesting allegation about the McGill Daily, but it’s unverified. The Bowdoin Orient piece we quoted from merely said that he heard stories and reports of rapes and sexual assaults and considered joining these vigilantes. This man is claiming that he said he actually observed assaults in progress and refused to do anything because it would be ‘imposing external values or undermining local agency.’
But the problem is that we can’t verify his claims, as we indicated here:
As of this writing he hasn’t responded and surely you have noticed the artifacts in his post that suggests he is either an AI account or he was relying on one. But we could imagine a number of scenarios where he might be 1) human and 2) basically right, but got the date wrong or something like that. We shall see if he responds.
Um, that’s not true. This is the passage he is highlighting:
I headed back to the apartment after an hour. Earlier that day, my professor had urged me to watch Morsi’s speech. As I struggled to understand a presidential address, I turned to my Egyptian roommate for some translation. He laughed, saying he couldn’t understand it either, although we both knew that his issue was the political message while mine was the vocabulary. As his chuckle came to an end, he mentioned my beard again. Having watched the protest in which the ikhwan were denounced, I decided that it was probably time for a trim.
While Mamdani mentions that he had trouble with the language, he doesn’t ever cite this as a reason not to join these righteous vigilantes. And more basically, how much do you have to understand in a language in order to say ‘stop,’ ‘leave her alone,’ or just to shout ‘police’?
How is it not wokism?
Google says ‘Ikhwan’ is Arabic for brothers or brethren, and is likely used to refer to the Muslim Brotherhood.
Finally, one person got very angry at the original poster.
And of course he is the best kind of correct:
So, yes, technically, he didn’t actually admit he watched a rape in progress and do nothing because of this dumb ideological reason. Rather he did nothing when he believed rapes were virtually certain to happen … because of that same, dumb ideological reason. We suppose that isn’t quite as bad. eye roll
Sheesh, some people…
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