On May 15, 2026, dozens of Muslim men performed prayers directly on the sidewalk adjacent to the Bnos Leah Prospect Park Yeshiva, a young-girls Orthodox Jewish school in Brooklyn, NYC. The men prostrated against the school wall 150 meters away from the Al-Madina Mosque. Video evidence, including the widely circulated clip posted by NYC Councilwoman Inna Vernikov, shows this deliberate occupation of public space right in front of where Jewish girls aged between 11 and 17 years go to school. Unlike many other Jewish schools, there were no armed guards in attendance.
NYC authorities issued citations for blocking the footpath, treating the event as a mere public order issue. This superficial response completely ignores the driving force and terror tactics of Islamic doctrine and Jihad.
From the perspective of Political Islam, this was not an innocent overflow of prayer. It was a classic act of jihad of intimidation and supremacy, asserting dominance over a vulnerable Jewish community.
Doctrinal Drivers
The Koran explicitly commands psychological and physical dominance over non-Muslims:
“I will cast terror into the hearts of those who disbelieved, so strike [them] upon the necks and strike from them every fingertip.” (Koran 8:12)
“Fight against such of those who have been given the Scripture as believe not in Allah […] until they pay the tribute readily, being brought low.” (Koran 9:29)
The choice of location is especially revealing. Islamic doctrine states that a woman’s presence or that of a donkey or dog in front of a praying man can invalidate the prayer (Hadith Bukhari 511). Yet these men deliberately chose the front of a Jewish female girls’ school rather than neutral sidewalks or residential retail areas. This was not necessity; it was calculated spatial jihad.
By praying en masse outside a Jewish girls’ school, the men asserted territorial supremacy in a Medinan model – the violent, political phase of Mohammed’s career. It sends a clear message of dominance to Jews.
This is not about religious freedom. It is Political Islam testing and pushing boundaries, claiming public space, and sowing fear in a Jewish community already facing rising violence against it. NYC’s focus on sidewalk citations while refusing to address the underlying Islamic doctrine of supremacy only enables further acts of this soft jihad.
The girls of Bnos Leah experienced what CSPII has long warned about: the real-world application of Koranic commands to harass and humble non-Muslims one sidewalk at a time.
Get the book The Islamic Doctrine of Women or go to cspii.org and read our most recent study on Female Genital Mutilation, CSPII FGM INDEX 2026.