(Headline USA) Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz repeatedly hosted a radical Islamist who went on to celebrate Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel last year.
As Minnesota governor, Walz met with imam Asad Zaman on at least five occasions, according to the Washington Examiner.
In 2023, Walz met with Zaman and other Muslim state leaders for a meeting about mosque security.
In 2020, Walz asked Zaman to speak at an event with other religious leaders to call for rioters to stop burning down the state’s cities in the wake of George Floyd’s death.
And in 2019, Zaman delivered an invocation before a state address by Walz, and appeared at a press conference alongside Walz calling for an end to a government shutdown. Also that year, Zaman attended a Ramadan event hosted by Walz.
Zaman, who works for the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, endorsed Hamas’s Oct. 7 terrorist attack, sharing an image on Facebook of a Palestinian flag the day of the attack with the caption “Palestine has the right to defend itself.”
He has also shared official Hamas press releases repeatedly, as well as antisemitic blog posts questioning the Holocaust and celebrating Nazi Germany. One article Zaman shared in 2015, for example, praised a pro-Hitler film called “The Greatest Story Never Told.”
Zaman’s organization, the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, released a statement on Oct. 7 saying it “reaffirms its unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.”
The Muslim American Society has its own troubling history, which includes ties to terrorism, according to federal prosecutors. It was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the U.S., prosecutors alleged, and has promoted violence against Jews.
Video footage that resurfaced in 2019 shows members of the Muslim American Society’s Philadelphia chapter saying, “We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque,” according to the Times of Israel.
