Has the woman photographed wearing a pink hijab posing next to a swastika been identified as Linda Sarsour, senior advisor of the Zohran for NYC campaign? No, that's not true on two counts. Linda Sarsour is not the senior advisor of the NYC mayoral campaign of Zohran Mamdani -- the "senior campaign advisor" is Zara Rahim. The photo of the unidentified woman posing near the swastika has circulated online since 2012. It was not until 2018 that Linda Sarsour's name was attached to the photo, by MAGA political activist Laura Loomer in an article for the website Big League Politics, but without links or other means of independently confirming Loomer's declaration it is Sarsour.
The photo appears in a post (archived here) published on X by @persianjewess on August 10, 2025 It was captioned:
Zohran Mamdani's senior advisor Linda Sarsour.
But I'm sure he only hates Zionists not Jews. 🙄
This is how the post appeared at the time of writing:
(Image source: screenshot of @persianjewess post on X by Lead Stories)
The earliest instance of the photo (archived here) found by Lead Stories (pictured below) appeared March 21, 2012 on a Polish messageboard wiocha.pl, that translates to "Village". The post's caption, translated to English by Google says:
She's outdone herself...
Adolf is turning in his grave...
(Image source: screenshot of @Dzivex post on Wiocha by Lead Stories)
There have been eighty seven comments left under this photo, and none mention the name of Linda Sarsour.
Another example (archived here) of the image with no mention of Sarsour appeared on a Russian poetry blog in 2019 with a poem in Russian.
An article by Laura Loomer (archived here) was published on August 9, 2018 by Big League Politics. The undated photo of the woman wearing a pink hijab appears in the article without any sourcing, any attribution to a photographer, or information about where it was taken. Above the photo, the paragraph written by Loomer reads:
As if Sarsour's lifelong ties to terrorism isn't enough of a reason for American voters and the Democrat Party to distance themselves from her or anyone associated with her, she was also photographed smiling in front of a swastika, the symbol of the Nazis who killed six million Jews during the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, link rot within TinEye's reverse image search tool has left many of the date-stamped clues to the photo's early history unreachable -- since links are unavailable to verify if Sarsour's name had ever appeared earlier than Loomer's 2018 article. The image has continued to surface over the years, always with captions disparaging Sarsour, but without evidence that the woman in the photo is actually her.
The Zohran For NYC website does not list the names of the campaign staff. The name Zohran Mamdani does not appear on Sarsour's website, and although she had made social media posts supporting the candidate for NYC mayor, her social media profiles do not say that she is working for the campaign in a formal capacity. The bio information Sarsour has listed on her Facebook account does not mention anything about the campaign. It reads:
Author, Racial Justice Activist, Community Organizer, Palestinian-Muslim-American, Brooklyn-born, mom
The person who appears to have the title of the Senior Advisor of the Zohran for NYC campaign is Zara Rahim. She has the title listed on her LinkedIn (pictured below) and TikTok accounts. Her X account links to the campaign's website zohranfornyc.com.
(Image source: screenshot of @zara-rahim profile on LinkedIn by Lead Stories)
Lead Stories reached out to both Sarsour and the Zohran for NYC campaign for comment and will update this article if we receive any replies.
