It is well known that the United Nations, whose General Assembly annual session ends this week, passes more resolutions condemning Israel than all other countries combined. Since the establishment of the U.N. Human Rights Council in 2006, approximately half of its country-specific resolutions have been against the world’s only Jewish state. The situation has become so extreme that on Aug. 25, U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, who is no supporter of Israel, called U.N. special rapporteurs “totally out of control.”
Today, an organization called the United Nations Islamic Community holds regular prayers and religious events at UN headquarters, which also include, at times, the promotion of anti-U.S. and anti-Israel narratives, as well as expressions of support for and validation of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack.
Having previously observed in person official proceedings and meetings of the U.N. Counter-Terrorism Committee and witnessed disturbing discussions openly expressing support for Hamas and Hizbullah, it was no surprise to learn of these ongoing sermons taking place inside the building.
One of the imams featured is associated with New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani. Videos of the organization’s prayer services, sermons, and lectures featuring imams and speakers, often at lecterns bearing the U.N. emblem and the text “United Nations Islamic Community,” are posted on YouTube by Aliyu Abdulsalam, who also delivers sermons that include strong anti-Israel rhetoric.
Abdulsalam, according to his bio, was or is now a Senior Security Officer at the U.N. providing “general security and protection of the United Nations property, Staff, visitors on the U.N. premises, Delegates and any dignitary.” He adds: “At the UN Headquarters, I had the privilege of providing close protection to VIPs during international events both in New York and other parts of the world.”
Muslim prayers were held regularly in a penthouse hall in the General Assembly building, not in the ecumenical UN Meditation Room designated for this purpose, beginning in 2005. The U.N. itself announced Friday prayers during the 2022 General Assembly, led by Assembly President Abdulla Shahid himself in the Qatar Lounge. Today, IslamicFinder.org lists a “United Nations Friday prayer facility” that is “used by UN staff, diplomats and visitors” with a congregation numbering in the hundreds. As far as can be determined from publicly available sources, Christians, Jews, Hindus, and members of other faiths at the UN do not hold regular religious services at the U.N.
Between 1991 and 2001, prominent Islamic scholar Sheikh Imran Hosein, who lived in New York for many years, led weekly Friday prayers and delivered a monthly sermon there. In an in-depth August 2025 interview, the imam, who had returned to his home in Trinidad and Tobago, said that “the secretary general of the United Nations gave the Muslims working in the United Nations the largest hall in the building… the Secretary General’s reception hall.”
His extremist sermons appear to have caused consternation: “Every Friday,” he said, “I would be warned… ‘Imran, you cannot come to the United Nations and speak like this.’” He asserted that “the Charter of the United Nations was in conflict with the Sharia of the Quran and Sunnah” but that despite his statements in his sermons, “they never stopped me from giving sermons” at the UN. While he lived in New York and preached at the U.N., he was making inflammatory statements about Jews in other venues. According to an interview, he left the U.S. after 9/11 and was not allowed to return.
Hosein is still making extremist statements. He called Oct. 7 an Israeli “false flag” operation, referring to it as “9/11 all over again.” He elaborated: “The Israeli Mossad was in the heart of 9/11… Israel [likewise] allowed the [Oct. 7] attack to take place in order to get a chance and opportunity to pursue an agenda.” He made these statements in March 2024.
Many of the United Nations Islamic Community videos on the YouTube page feature prominent Indonesia-born imam Mohammed Shamsi Ali. Shamsi Ali said in 2017 that he was “the longest-serving khatib [person delivering the sermon] at the weekly Friday service at the UN headquarters in New York,” delivering monthly sermons to a congregation of about 400. He too has made controversial statements about Oct. 7.
Shamsi Ali was also a leading figure in interfaith circles. After 9/11, he was chosen by the city of New York to represent the Muslim community during President George W. Bush’s interfaith visit to Ground Zero. He founded the Jamaica, Queens-based Nusantara Foundation, which states that it is “dedicated to promoting interfaith harmony and cooperation… particularly between Muslims and other communities.” Photos on the website and on his Instagram account show him with Mamdani and other prominent figures on numerous occasions. He is also director of the Jamaica Muslim Center.
Ali has also made controversial statements about Oct. 7, 2023, from inside the UN. In a United Nations Islamic Community video conference one week after the attack, he deemed it “not a surprise” to anyone who “understand[s] the nature of the conflict,” equating it with a homeowner’s attempt to reclaim his house from a robber and stressing that “is highly expected. Because people have the right and want to get back their right.”
In anti-U.S. rhetoric, he said on the subject of American wars in Muslim countries, in an August 2022 United Nations Islamic Community video conference, that “we don’t say specifically that America is engaging in terrorist activities, but killing innocent people is nothing more than what terrorists are doing.” Additionally, in a July 18 United Nations Islamic Community video conference, he called young Americans “animals” and stated, “We Muslims are here to revive America.”
Aliyu Abdulsalam, who posts the United Nations Islamic Community content on his YouTube channel and also delivers United Nations Islamic Community sermons and moderates its discussions, asserted in the October 2023 video conference that one of the videos that “Israel will collapse. Palestine will win… We Muslims know it. Based on faith in Allah… no matter how long it will take.”
In February 2026, Abdulsalam spoke in a UNIC Ramadan video along with Dr. Akram Kassab, a prominent disciple and biographer of the late Qatar-based Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yusuf al Qaradawi.
Another frequent speaker in UNIC videos is Imam Abdulkareem Adeeb, a Lebanese-born American. “These people” — i.e. Israel/the Jews — cannot be trusted, he said, because photos of the Oct. 7 atrocities might have been AI-generated, and asserted that “terrorism is the defense of the oppressed.”
Also delivering sermons is Imam Mohammed Ibn Ahmed, who heads the Islamic Chaplaincy of New Jersey and has appeared as a guest speaker/khatib at the Abrahamic Foundation in the U.K. — and who called Oct. 7 “just a byproduct of the oppression” of the Palestinians.
‘OCT. 7 WAS HORRIFIC, BUT…’: WHY THE UN WALKED OUT BEFORE NETANYAHU SAID A WORD
Guterres opened a U.N. conference on interfaith and intercultural dialogue on Sept. 17 with a warning about hate speech that “incites violence, drives conflict, and contributes to the perpetration of atrocity crimes.” He added: “We have seen it happen before and we see it happening now. And we cannot let it continue.”
The U.N.’s lending of its legitimacy and platform to religious figures whose sermons and statements promote conspiracy theories, extremism, and hatred is another stain on its history. At a time of rising global antisemitism and continuing threats from Islamist extremism, the institution created in the shadow of the Holocaust should be confronting such rhetoric, not amplifying it. If the U.N. is truly committed to combating hate speech, it must examine whom it welcomes through its doors — it cannot credibly condemn hatred worldwide while legitimizing those who preach it on its own stage.
Steven Stalinsky is Executive Director of MEMRI.