Union Theological Seminary cancels 'Queer Muslim' event with Hamas, Hezbollah sympathizer
Union Theological Seminary (UTS) in New York City reportedly canceled a talk slated to take place on its campus this week from a self-described "Muslim anarchist" who was banned from affiliated Columbia University after publicly endorsing the terrorist organizations Hamas and Hezbollah.
The planned Wednesday talk from Mohamed Abdou about "decolonial organizing lessons from Gaza's warrior mujahideen," was ultimately pushed off campus following a report from The Washington Free Beacon.
The talk was part of an event titled "Death to the Akademy: How To Be a Thorn in Their Throat Amidst Snakes in the Grass" and organized by Queer Muslims of NYC, which describes itself as an "antiracist, abolitionist, grassroots collective rooted in Islamic Liberation Theology, committed to gender justice, queer justice, anti-capitalism, and decolonization," according to the outlet.
Another organizer included Students for a Liberated Palestine at UTS, and a flyer for the event used inverted red triangles, which were used in Hamas propaganda videos to represent Israeli targets. Queer Muslims NYC claimed in a Wednesday Instagram post that the UTS administration "shut down the talk with Dr. Mahomed Abdou and the Queer Iftar [meal to break Ramadan fast] on its premises!"
During the Spring 2024 semester, when Abdou was a visiting professor at Columbia University who taught a class called "Decolonial Queerness and Abolition in Southwest Asia and North Africa," he prompted scrutiny for a social media post he made shortly after the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack against Israel, in which he expressed support for Hamas, Hezbollah and Islamic jihad "up to a point."
When Rep. Elise Stefanik, R-N.Y., grilled then-Columbia University President Minouche Shafik about Abdou's employment during a congressional hearing that April, Shafik said he "will never work at Columbia again." After Abdou's departure from Columbia, UTS students put out a petition in June 2024 urging the seminary to hire him, according to the Columbia Spectator.
UTS spokesperson Afsheen Shamsi told The Christian Post on Thursday that UTS was "not aware of the violent nature of the event" with Abdou this week, and withdrew their support when they learned.
UTS President Serene Jones, who has led UTS since 2008 and formerly served as chair of gender, woman, and sexuality studies at Yale University, said in a statement provided to CP that the event does not reflect the worldview of the school.
"The violent and hateful rhetoric expressed at the non-Union, off-campus event is in complete contradiction of UTS's values, and we forcefully condemn it," she said. "To put it plainly, this is not who we are."
"In order to preserve our community's rigorous code of conduct and standards which are grounded in peace and respect, we have publicly denounced this event and will continue to take action to ensure our values are upheld by students and that destructive and deceptive actions will under no circumstances be tolerated," Jones added.
Queer Muslims of NYC reportedly still hosted Abdou virtually Wednesday, when he called for jihad, according to footage shared by Manhattan Institute investigative analyst Stu Smith.
"Let us engage in jihad, and there are rules for jihad, and Muslims know that Allah has commanded rules. We don't engage in wanton violence, but we don't accept the negative peace either," Abdou said.
Abdou also praised Elias Rodriguez for his "assassination of two Zionists." Rodriguez potentially faces the death penalty after being charged with murdering two Israeli Embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., last year.
???? UTS Pushed “Death to the Akademy” Online. Former Columbia Professor Muhammad Abdou Used the Event to Call for Jihad and Praise Elias Rodriguez
— Stu Smith (@thestustustudio) March 12, 2026
Union Theological Seminary, a Columbia affiliate, canceled the in-person portion of “Death to the Akademy” at the eleventh hour, with… pic.twitter.com/sIz9lf2bc3
"God bless him. He took action," Abdou said of Rodriguez. "Take action. Not only that kind of action, just to be very clear, because there's also building. We need to destroy. We need to create alternatives."
UTS, the oldest independent seminary in the U.S., was established in 1836 by ministers with the Presbyterian Church in the United States of America (PCUSA), a denomination that existed from 1789 until it merged with another one in 1958.
The school effectively severed itself from church oversight and became independent in the 1890s after the PCUSA General Assembly attempted to veto the appointment of professor Charles Augustus Briggs, who was later defrocked and excommunicated by the Presbyterians for what the church ruled were his heretical views of Scripture.
The seminary went on to become a bastion of liberal theology, and German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer described the students there in the 1930s as "completely clueless with respect to what dogmatics is really about."
"They are unfamiliar with even the most basic of questions. They become intoxicated with liberal and humanistic phrases, laugh at the fundamentalists, and yet basically are not even up to their level," wrote Bonhoeffer, who decided to cut his time in the United States short and return to Germany, where he was ultimately martyred in 1945.
In 2019, UTS drew headlines and scorn when they advertised its students confessing their climate sins to plants in the school's chapel. That same year, Serene Jones garnered backlash when she appeared to reject fundamentals of the Christian faith, including the Resurrection and Virgin Birth, during an interview with The New York Times.
