By: Fern Sidman

The New York mayoral race took another unexpected turn this week as revelations surfaced linking socialist Democratic nominee Zohran Mamdani’s family to years of financial and cultural support from Qatar, the oil-rich Gulf monarchy known for bankrolling Hamas and engaging in wide-ranging influence operations abroad.

According to detailed report that appeared on Sunday in The New York Post, Qatar’s patronage of Mamdani’s mother, acclaimed filmmaker Mira Nair, stretches back more than a decade and includes millions of dollars in direct production financing, state-backed commissions, and public endorsements by a royal family member who has recently taken to promoting Mamdani’s candidacy online.

The disclosures raise uncomfortable questions about the reach of foreign money in American politics, the intersection of cultural soft power and electoral campaigns, and the extent to which one of Washington’s most controversial allies may now be attempting to shape the outcome of New York City’s elections.

At the center of the controversy is Sheikha Al-Mayassa bint Hamad Al-Thani, sister of Qatar’s ruling emir and chair of several of the country’s leading cultural institutions. As reported by The New York Post, Sheikha Al-Mayassa has long championed Nair’s creative work, underwriting films, stage productions, and film-lab initiatives through entities like the Doha Film Institute and the Qatar National Museum.

The sheikha’s patronage has not been merely symbolic. In 2012, the Doha Film Institute financed the entire $15 million budget of Nair’s film The Reluctant Fundamentalist, a movie that struggled for years to secure Western funding. The film, which portrays the disillusionment of a Pakistani immigrant in post-9/11 America, debuted at the Doha Tribeca Film Festival that same year—a platform also funded by Qatar.

Qatari institutions later commissioned Nair to direct Nafas, a cultural piece about the Gulf’s pearl divers, which was the inaugural film exhibit at the new Qatar National Museum in 2019. According to the information provided in The New York Post report, the project was personally overseen by Sheikha Al-Mayassa, who chaired the museum.

Most recently, in 2022, Qatar Airways and Qatar Creates—the latter another cultural venture closely linked to the sheikha—funded a lavish stage adaptation of Nair’s Golden Globe–nominated Monsoon Wedding during the World Cup festivities in Doha. The sheikha herself was credited with shepherding the production.

Since mid-June, Al-Mayassa has openly praised Mamdani on social media, amplifying favorable polls and reacting approvingly to footage of him embracing his mother. The Post report observed that her Instagram and TikTok activity has become a strikingly personal endorsement—an unusual move by a member of a foreign royal family with deep ties to Islamist networks.

Nair’s ties to Qatar stretch well beyond these headline projects. From 2010 to 2014, the Doha Film Institute underwrote her Maisha Film Labs in East Africa, training young Qatari students in screenwriting and film production. Publicly available trade data also shows that a company registered in Nair’s name in India conducted more than $100,000 in business with a Qatar-based event management firm linked to one of the emirate’s largest energy companies in 2022 and 2023.

As The New York Post report emphasized, Nair herself has been a regular presence at Qatari cultural events. She was photographed at the Qatar National Museum as recently as November 2024, and her public comments have been consistently laudatory toward the Gulf monarchy. During the World Cup, she praised Sheikha Al-Mayassa for supporting the Monsoon Wedding musical, saying in an interview with Qatar Happening: “Her Highness has loved the movie but also supported the inception of this musical over several years.”

The optics of these ties are particularly fraught given the ideological contradictions they expose. Nair has positioned herself in the West as a champion of the marginalized, openly boycotting Israeli cultural festivals on political grounds. Her son, Assemblyman Mamdani, has pledged to make New York an “LGBTQIA+ sanctuary city.”

Yet Qatar’s own record tells a different story. As the Post report pointed out, the Gulf emirate enforces sharia-based restrictions that bar women from marrying or holding public office without a male guardian’s permission, while homosexual activity can be punished by imprisonment, torture, or even execution.

Moreover, the regime’s treatment of migrant laborers has drawn scathing criticism. Human rights groups estimate that thousands of workers perished in extreme heat while building stadiums for the 2022 World Cup—conditions many described as modern-day slavery. Despite this, Nair has never publicly condemned Qatar’s abuses, instead celebrating its cultural patronage of her work.

The inconsistency, critics argue, undercuts both her credibility and her son’s. As Danielle Pletka of the American Enterprise Institute told The New York Post, “They are buying somebody who is willing to be bought, and at the time of their choosing they will ask for what they want. They need a rainbow coalition of people who will support the ideology they promote: sometimes it will be Islamism, sometimes it will be antisemitism, sometimes it will be anti-Israel.”

The revelations land at a precarious moment for Mamdani. Having defeated Andrew Cuomo in the Democratic primary, the assemblyman has emerged as a front-runner in the mayoral race. But as The New York Post highlighted, the national Democratic establishment remains wary of him, with figures like House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer keeping their distance in the run-up to the 2026 midterms.

Now, the added dimension of Qatari influence could heighten concerns that Mamdani’s administration might be susceptible to foreign interests. Jonathan Schanzer of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies told the New York Post that Qatar has a documented history of using its immense wealth to cultivate relationships with Western officials—sometimes through corruption scandals, such as bribery cases involving European lawmakers and former U.S. Senator Bob Menendez.

“The Qataris are hyperactive in terms of international diplomacy, international investment, and everything that they do is designed to spread their funds and spread their influence,” Schanzer warned. He described the country as “both arsonist and firefighter,” simultaneously backing destabilizing actors like Hamas while presenting itself as a mediator.

Mamdani has denied any direct financial connection to Qatar. His campaign stressed that he has never traveled to the country or received assistance from its institutions. However, as The New York Post reported, his campaign declined to say whether his mother had contributed funds that may have originated from Qatari cultural grants. Nor would his team directly condemn the Al-Thani regime, issuing instead a broad statement affirming Mamdani’s “belief in universal human rights and the freedom to advocate for justice everywhere.”

Dora Pekec, a spokesperson for Mamdani’s campaign, dismissed the story as an orchestrated distraction. “The attempt to weaponize his mother’s career against him is an insult to voters who care about actual issues, not manufactured distractions,” she told the Post.

Yet questions linger, especially given the pattern of Qatari investments in Western politics and culture. With Al-Mayassa’s online endorsements now part of the public record, Mamdani’s refusal to distance himself explicitly from the royal family leaves him open to charges of complicity—or at least complacency—in the face of foreign interference.

Observers note that Qatar’s strategy is not unique to the Mamdani case but part of a broader campaign of cultural diplomacy. By funding films, museums, and sporting events, the emirate seeks to soften its international image and expand its influence across continents. As The New York Post report observed, such investments often blur the line between artistic patronage and political lobbying.

The Doha Film Institute, for example, has become a major financier of global cinema, underwriting projects that struggle to attract Western backers. Qatar Creates and Qatar Airways, meanwhile, have used cultural spectacles like Monsoon Wedding to bolster the country’s profile as a cultural hub—even as its human rights record remains under fire.

Critics argue that these investments often carry ideological strings. By supporting artists such as Nair, whose work challenges Western foreign policy and highlights Muslim victimhood narratives, Qatar aligns cultural output with its own political messaging.

The controversy surrounding Mamdani thus raises broader ethical questions: To what extent should the family ties of political candidates be scrutinized for foreign influence? Does the patronage of an artist automatically taint her offspring’s political legitimacy?

For many New Yorkers, the immediate concern may be less theoretical. The city is now confronted with the possibility that its next mayor could be, at least indirectly, indebted to one of the world’s most controversial regimes. As The New York Post warned in its investigation, “only one degree of separation” may stand between the Qatari royal family and the office of New York’s mayor.

The revelations about Qatar’s financial and cultural support for Mira Nair—and the subsequent social media cheerleading of Zohran Mamdani’s mayoral campaign by Sheikha Al-Mayassa—represent more than just an uncomfortable subplot in New York’s mayoral race. They illuminate the broader dynamics of how authoritarian regimes use wealth, art, and influence to shape political outcomes abroad.

For Mamdani, the political cost remains uncertain. He insists on his independence, but the optics are damaging: a socialist candidate whose campaign for “universal justice” now collides with his mother’s long-standing collaboration with a monarchy that bankrolls Hamas, suppresses women and minorities, and has been accused of slave-like labor practices.

As The New York Post report indicated, the stakes are high. New York City is not only the nation’s largest metropolis but also a global symbol of liberal democracy. Whether its voters will overlook the shadow of Qatari influence remains one of the defining questions of the 2025 mayoral election.