(Dmytro “Henry” Aleksandrov, Headline USA) On at least five occasions as governor of Minnesota, Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas‘s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and promoted a Neo-Nazi film that glorifies Adolf Hitler.
The Washington Examiner reported that, in May 2023, Imam Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota joined other Muslim leaders for a mosque security meeting with Walz’s state’s gubernatorial office.
In May 2020, Zaman also spoke at an event to call for peaceful protests with Walz during the riots in Minnesota sparked after George Floyd’s death. In April 2019, the cleric delivered an invocation before Walz’s state address — just months after Zaman called for an end to a government shutdown at a press conference with Walz in January of the same year.
Social media posts also showed that Zaman attended an event that Walz hosted for Ramadan in May 2019.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Zaman, a Bangladesh native, said that he “stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks.” On the same day, he also shared an image of a Palestinian flag on Facebook in response to a post by Yusuf Abdi Abdulle, director of the Islamic Association of North America, declaring that “Palestine has the right to defend itself.”
Zaman continued showing his Jew-hatred by using his Facebook page over the years to share official Hamas press releases, blog posts on antisemitic websites attacking Jews and a link to a piece on a website for a pro-Hitler film called The Greatest Story Never Told. The propaganda movie that was released in 2013 became very popular among Jew-haters and Nazi supporters.
Additionally, the news source reported that Zaman equated Hamas committing terrorism to Israel defending itself.
State records indicated that Walz’s administration had awarded the organization over $100,000 in funding.
“It is astounding that with all the available public reporting and information about the iniquities of Imam Asad Zaman and MAS, Minnesota Gov. Walz has repeatedly given public platforms and taxpayer money to this extremist. Across the country, Islamists hungry for government support will surely welcome Walz as vice president,” Sam Westrop, a terrorism researcher and analyst at the Middle East Forum think tank, said.
