A new study published by the Ideological Defense Institute (IDI), a Washington-based think tank led by Jordanian-born former-Muslim analyst Dan Burmawi, argues that the election of Zohran Mamdani as mayor of New York City and the U.S. Senate primary victory of Abdul El-Sayed in Michigan are not isolated events but the American breakthrough of a century-old political fusion the study calls the “red-green alliance.”
Authored by veteran Egyptian-American analyst and Coptic Solidarity co-founder Magdi Khalil, the report traces the coalition from Khomeini’s 1979 Iranian Revolution to today’s Democratic Party, documents its financing through named Islamic PACs, and concludes that its objective is the demolition — in Khalil’s own words — of “the founding principles of the United States,” “the Founding Fathers,” and “Western civilization from within.” The late Charlie Kirk had warned of the same convergence in a separate policy brief months before his death, describing it as a “spiritual battle” against “the American way of life.”
Where the alliance came from
According to the IDI study, the “red-green” or “Islamo-leftist” phenomenon first entered public discourse in early-twenty-first-century France, where sociologist Pierre-André Taguieff coined the term Islamo-gauchisme in his 2002 book The New Judeophobia. Khalil traces the mutual admiration further back, however, to the 1979 Iranian Revolution, when leading French leftists Jean-Paul Sartre and Michel Foucault embraced Khomeini’s rise. Foucault, the study notes, described the revolution as “a new political spirituality, an alternative to Western modernity.”
The doctrine was formalized, according to Khalil, in British Marxist Chris Harman’s 1994 pamphlet The Prophet and the Proletariat, which instructed Western leftists that “where the Islamists are in opposition, our rule should be ‘with the Islamists sometimes, with the state never.’” Khalil also cites successive French officials — President Emmanuel Macron, former interior minister Gérald Darmanin, former higher-education minister Frédérique Vidal, and former education minister Jean-Michel Blanquer — who between 2020 and 2021 described the Islamo-left as, variously, minimizing Islamic violence, complicit in French terrorist attacks, and “gnawing at the whole of French society.”
What the two ideologies share, per the study
The IDI study argues that the radical Left and the Islamic movement, despite their surface incompatibility, share a common operational agenda: reducing the power of police and the military, defending illegal immigration, opposing capitalism, “demonizing the Founding Fathers,” and ultimately “working to demolish Western civilization from within.”
Khalil writes that both movements are “totalitarian, exclusionary, supremacist ideologies,” both practice violence to achieve their goals, both cultivate a victim mentality, and both are far better at opposition than at governing.
Mamdani: “the Big Apple has fallen”
The IDI study calls Mamdani’s victory “a dangerous turning point in the history of New York” — “a communist governing the capital of world capitalism; a Muslim who relied financially and organizationally in his campaign on Islamic organizations, governing the city that Islamic terrorism struck roughly a quarter century ago.” Khalil notes that Mamdani was the first mayor in New York’s history to announce his religion after his victory, declaring, “I am proud of my faith, and I will serve by what Islam taught me,” and celebrating his win at a mosque in Astoria where he told supporters, “I am from you and for you.”
According to the study, Islamic activist Linda Sarsour said at a CAIR conference on September 20, 2025, that “Islamic money and Islamic Super PACs played a pivotal role in funding Mamdani and his political rise.” Khalil reports that Sarsour has since been appointed an adviser to Mamdani and that she has demanded the incoming mayor dismantle the NYPD unit responsible for monitoring terrorist threats. The study names the specific financial vehicles: CAIR Action, a 501(c)(4) affiliated with CAIR — an organization named an unindicted co-conspirator in the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terror-financing prosecution — established the Unity and Justice Fund Super PAC, which the study says contributed $120,000 to Mamdani and drew more than 80 percent of its funding from Muslim donors. A second CAIR-linked vehicle, Unity Lab PAC, also funded the campaign, per the study.
El-Sayed: “from the very heart of the Islamic movement”
Khalil calls El-Sayed’s Democratic Senate nomination in Michigan “a greater shock than Mamdani’s” because, the study contends, El-Sayed “comes from the very heart of the Islamic movement in America.” According to the study, El-Sayed and his wife were leading members of the Muslim Students Association (MSA) at the University of Michigan — an organization the study describes as founded by the Muslim Brotherhood in America. His father-in-law, Jukaku Tayeb, is identified in the study as a founder of the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA) and a former president of CAIR’s Michigan chapter.
The study further reports that El-Sayed’s biological mother, Faten Fathi al-Koumi, worked for the Islamic American Relief Agency (IARA) — an organization the study notes was designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2004 over its financial ties to Osama bin Laden, Hamas, and the Taliban. According to the study, El-Sayed’s father-in-law donated more than $200,000 to his Senate campaign and members of CAIR contributed $115,000 across 41 donors, most of whom held or hold positions at the organization.
The study also identifies Twitch streamer Hasan Piker — who said America “deserved” the September 11 attacks — as the individual running media promotion for El-Sayed’s campaign.
The stakes, in the study’s own words
Khalil concludes that the alliance’s objectives include criminalizing criticism of Islam as “Islamophobia,” securing recognition of Islamic “cultural and legal particularity” including sharia courts and sharia towns “despite their contradiction with Western constitutions,” and normalizing jihad inside Western societies. He argues that both the Islamic movement and its Western leftist allies “hate the West and Western civilization” and “hate Judaism and Christianity.”
IDI chief executive Dan Burmawi, who amplified the study on X this week, calls Khalil “quite possibly the most competent living expert on the Middle East.” The report’s warning is direct: the coalition, per Khalil, is not incidentally corroding the American constitutional order and its Christian civilizational foundations. That is its stated goal.