Days after ditching America's 250th Independence Day celebrations for an Islamic spiritual retreat on a Spanish resort island, New York City's first lady Rama Duwaji is now heading to Corsica to co-host a sold-out, all-female pro-Palestinian retreat at a 15th-century monastery, where participants will honor the Virgin Mary as "a Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation."
The retreat, organized by a Muslim-and-women-focused travel group called The Women Sanctuary, starts July 9 and costs attendees between $3,100 and $5,260 for a private "casita" with garden views and a private bathroom. Duwaji, the 29-year-old Syrian-American wife of Mayor Zohran Mamdani, traveled to Corsica this week after spending the prior weekend at a Women Sanctuary event in Mallorca, Spain, where she served as "artist-in-residence" at a sold-out "Plants Of The Quran" workshop, the New York Post reported.
That Mallorca trip put Duwaji on a plane out of Newark International Airport over the Fourth of July weekend, while New York City marked the nation's 250th birthday without its first lady.
The backlash over Duwaji's absence from the historic holiday was swift. Queens Councilwoman Joann Ariola did not hold back. As Breitbart reported, Ariola said:
"Nothing says 'America 250' quite like skipping the celebration for a Mediterranean vacation, but I am not surprised because she has made her hatred for America very evident."
Staten Island Councilman Frank Morano offered a more measured critique. As Fox News reported, Morano said: "No one is saying elected officials and their families can't take vacations, but this was a moment to show up for the city and for the country, and she missed it."
Mamdani's office confirmed Duwaji was not accompanied by her taxpayer-funded NYPD security detail during the Spain trip. Conservative commentator Arynne Wexler noted the timing: "Funny how when @ZohranKMamdani was telling New Yorkers to lower their AC his wife Rama Duwaji was boarding a flight to party in Mallorca."
The optics were already poor. Now the Corsica retreat adds another layer, one with sharper political edges.
The Women Sanctuary, run by Parisian designer Rym Nur, describes the Corsica gathering as a spiritual experience centered on the Virgin Mary's place in the Quran. The group's website states that Mary is "the only woman mentioned by name in the Qur'an, mentioned 34 times" and calls her story "one of divine motherhood" and "unwavering faith, sacred retreat, and total devotion to Allah."
But the retreat's spiritual framing carries an unmistakable political charge. A 2025 Vogue Arabia article about the prior year's Corsica retreat, the same event, same organizer, same location, quoted an unnamed attendee describing the gathering's ethos in explicitly political terms:
"At every prayer, lecture and meal, there was mention of our sisters in Palestine."
That same attendee described a guest who had just returned from volunteering at Gaza's Nasser Hospital, and then offered this characterization of the Virgin Mary: "It is not lost on us that Mary, too, was a Palestinian woman giving birth under occupation. In the Qur'an, she cries out in anguish, 'I wish I had died before this and had been long forgotten.'"
At last year's retreat, Nur gifted each participant a handmade keffiyeh created by New York-based Palestinian designer Sarah Musa. The Vogue Arabia attendee described the scene: "Nur gifted each guest a keffiyeh from Palestinian designer Sarah Musa, which we donned while praying on the grass, laughing at the dinner table and on journeys for espresso to the nearby village."
Musa's website states that 100 percent of profits from select keffiyeh styles go to the Palestine Red Crescent Society and the Palestine Children's Relief Fund. Both organizations carry controversy. The Israeli military has criticized the Palestine Red Crescent Society for alleged ties to Hamas in Gaza; the society denies any such links and says it is an independent body complying with international protocol. The California-based Palestine Children's Relief Fund has been accused of Hamas ties by NGO Monitor, a Jerusalem-based research group. PCRF says it "complies with US laws checking all individuals and agencies against terrorist organization lists published by the US Treasury Department."
Duwaji's participation in this ecosystem, the retreats, the keffiyeh-gifting, the framing of the Virgin Mary as a symbol of Palestinian resistance, fits a pattern that has drawn scrutiny before. She has previously "liked" social media posts celebrating Hamas and created an illustration for an anti-Israel article, according to prior New York Post reporting. She reportedly apologized for deleted anti-American social media posts, including ones praising Palestinian terror groups and attacking U.S. service members, back in April.
Rachel Fulton Brown, a history professor at the University of Chicago and author of "Mary and the Art of Prayer," pushed back on the retreat's central conceit. Calling the historical question "complicated," she told the Post plainly:
"Trying to pretend that now is 2,000 years ago is not helpful to anyone. It's not going to help us deal with the situation in Gaza."
The framing of Mary, a Jewish woman living in Roman-era Judea, as "Palestinian" is not a neutral historical claim. It is a political assertion, one that retroactively maps a modern national identity onto a figure who predates that identity by roughly two millennia. That this framing goes unchallenged at a luxury retreat attended by the first lady of America's largest city tells you something about the circles she moves in.
Mayor Mamdani's tenure has already generated its own share of controversy. His first 100 days in office drew criticism for broken promises on housing, policing, and libraries.
The choice of Corsica as a venue adds an ironic wrinkle. Nicolas Battini, director of Mossa Palatina, a conservative political movement he founded in 2024, now allied to France's right-wing National Movement, told the Post that the island has a "conflicted" relationship with Islam. But he also noted Corsica's proud history of protecting Jews during the Nazi occupation.
"Corsica is the only French department during the occupation during the Second World War that did not deport any Jews, which is why it was named 'the island of the just.'"
As for Duwaji's visit, Battini was diplomatic but unimpressed: "She is free to participate in the events that she pleases. Her presence in Corsica raises neither approbation nor enthusiasm."
That the first lady of New York City would bring a pro-Palestinian political retreat to an island celebrated for sheltering Jews during the Holocaust is a juxtaposition that writes itself. The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack left 1,200 Israelis dead. The retreat's organizers frame their gathering as spiritual solidarity. But when every prayer, lecture, and meal includes "mention of our sisters in Palestine," and when participants describe Mary as a woman "giving birth under occupation," the line between spiritual reflection and political advocacy disappears.
Mamdani himself has faced backlash from Jewish leaders over inflammatory remarks at a Brooklyn rally. His wife's pattern of conduct, the social media history, the retreat participation, the skipped national celebrations, does not exist in isolation. It reflects a consistent set of sympathies.
The retreat itself is not exactly a grassroots solidarity effort. At up to $5,260 per person, with farm-to-table dining in a 15th-century monastery, it is luxury activism at its most refined. The Women Sanctuary runs retreats across Corsica, Tanzania, Portugal, and Spain. Most attendees are described as Muslim women. The Corsica event is sold out.
Duwaji attended the Mallorca event as "artist-in-residence." Her specific co-hosting responsibilities in Corsica remain unclear. But the pattern is visible: the first lady of New York City, a city home to one of the largest Jewish populations in the world, keeps choosing to spend her time and lend her name to gatherings that frame the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in one direction only.
The mayor's office has not addressed the Corsica trip. And broader questions about Mamdani's willingness to defy institutional norms continue to accumulate.
New Yorkers watching their first lady skip the nation's 250th birthday to jet between Mediterranean retreats, retreats that cost more than many of their monthly rents, are entitled to ask a simple question: Who does she think she represents?
Duwaji holds no elected office. She is not bound by the same obligations as her husband. But the title "first lady" carries weight in any city, and in New York it carries more than most. When you skip the Fourth of July for a $3,400 Islamic retreat in Spain and then immediately head to a $5,260 pro-Palestinian gathering in Corsica, you are making a statement, whether you intend to or not.
The retreat's organizers can call it spiritual. The attendees can call it solidarity. But when the first lady of New York City lends her name and presence to an event that reframes a Jewish biblical figure as a Palestinian resistance symbol, the message lands exactly where it was aimed. And the people footing the bill for her husband's administration deserve to know it.
