Posts claim woman in photo posing next to swastika is Zohran Mamdani's senior adviser or Linda Sarsour

In August 2025, people on social media shared a photo of a woman in a hijab posing next to a swastika and claimed the woman was linked to Democratic New York City mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. Many posts claimed to have identified the woman as the activist Linda Sarsour.

For example, one X post (archived) with over 5 million views asserted the woman was the senior adviser to Mamdani's campaign, without naming the person. Another post on X (archived), liked over 10,000 times, claimed explicitly the woman was "Zohran Mamdani's senior advisor Linda Sarsour." Versions of the claim spread to other social media sites, such as Instagram (archived) and Threads (archived), as well. Snopes readers searched the site and reached out to ask if the claim was true.

The photo was miscaptioned in these posts. The woman in the photo was neither Mamdani's senior adviser nor Sarsour.

The only senior adviser to Zohran Mamdani's campaign we found evidence of was a woman named Zara Rahim, according to her LinkedIn profile, which also said she previously worked on campaigns for Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama. Zara Rahim's appearance did not match that of the woman in the photo. 

Snopes reached out to the Mamdani campaign to confirm both the woman in the photo and Sarsour were unrelated to the campaign but did not receive a response before publishing.

Sarsour, a Palestinian-American activist best known for her role in organizing the National Women's March in 2017, during U.S. President Donald Trump's first presidency, did not have any previous experience working directly for political campaigns, according to her LinkedIn profile. While Sarsour supported Mamdani during his campaign to become the Democratic nominee for New York City mayor, there was no evidence she ever worked for his campaign.

Sarsour denied the woman in the photo was her in a post (archived) from her Facebook account. She wrote:

Just figured out why i am getting an influx of some of the most despicable hate filled messages and emails.

 

The opposition is recirculating an old debunked photo. An outrageous image they purportedly say is me and it clear as day that IT IS NOT. We also do not know whether it is a real picture of someone else or was altered! The person who originally published that photo years ago was none other than Laura Loomer, a MAGA anti-Palestinian right wing influencer.

 

Someone resurrected this fake photo to use it to attack Zohran because the desperation is very real. They will resort to everything including despicable and defamatory LIES to defeat our movements and in the end, they will lose.

 

I am EXHAUSTED. But I will not waver. I am not afraid. People know better and are better than haphazard misinformation and cheap memes on the internet.

Sarsour's mention of the conservative commentator Laura Loomer, who has a history of spreading baseless conspiracy theories, was an apparent reference to an article Loomer wrote in 2018 in which she alleged, without evidence, that the woman in the photo was Sarsour. The image did not appear to be widely associated with Sarsour prior to Loomer's article.

Snopes reached out to Sarsour over social media for confirmation she was not the woman in the photo but did not hear back before publishing.

The oldest version of the photo Snopes could find was in a March 21, 2012, post to a Polish-language forum (archived). The person who posted it did not identify the woman in the photo or give any details as to when or where it was taken. We found no evidence that the photo was altered, digitally or otherwise.

The woman in the photo did not exactly match Sarsour's appearance, despite a resemblance. Photos Sarsour posted of herself to social media in December 2011, September 2012, November 2012 and December 2012, shortly before and after the image in question first circulated online, did not match the appearance of the woman in the photo. Features including the shape of her nose and eyebrows and the complexion of her skin did not match those of Sarsour.