Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, on at least five occasions as governor of Minnesota, hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas‘s Oct. 7 attack last year on Israel and promoted a film popular among Neo-Nazis that glorifies Adolf Hitler, the Washington Examiner found.
The imam, Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, joined other Muslim leaders in May 2023 for a meeting about mosque security with Walz’s gubernatorial office in Minnesota. Zaman also spoke at a May 2020 event to call for peaceful protests with the governor 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 2019.
Zaman, moreover, attended a May 2019 event that Walz hosted for Ramadan, social media posts show.
Walz’s ties to Zaman could serve as problematic baggage for the Minnesota governor as he campaigns with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. News of the ties also comes after a Washington Free Beacon report this week found Walz spoke at a 2019 event with an antisemitic scholar who has defended terrorism against Israel.
Zaman, who is from Bangladesh, said on Oct. 7 of last year that he “stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks.” That day, which saw 1,200 Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists, 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.” The Biden-Harris administration, Abdulle wrote in the post, was “on the wrong side of history” in “supporting the extremist Zionist regime and its illegal settlements.”
Zaman, meanwhile, has used his Facebook page over the years to share official Hamas press releases, blog posts on antisemitic websites slamming Jews, and, in one 2015 instance, a link to a piece on a website for a pro-Hitler film called The Greatest Story Never Told. The propaganda movie was released in 2013 and is a favorite among antisemites and QAnon conspiracy influencers, according to the Anti-Defamation League.
“Imam Zaman has a troubling history of playing into classic anti-Jewish themes and justifying violence against Israel,” an Anti-Defamation League spokesperson told the Washington Examiner.
“He also has justified violence against Israel, including from terror groups,” the ADL spokesperson said. “Given his hurtful remarks post-Oct. 7, and absent any recognition of the pain he has caused the Jewish community, we urge all public officials and leaders to avoid meeting with him in the future. Those who have met with Imam Zaman should clarify that they don’t agree with his toxic views about Jews and the Jewish state.”
On Oct. 8 of last year, in response to Rep. Katie Porter (D-CA) condemning the Oct. 7 attack, Zaman asked the congresswoman if she would be willing to “reaffirm the right of Palestinians to defend themselves.” The Muslim American Society of Minnesota said in a statement on Oct. 7 that it “reaffirms its unwavering support for the Palestinian people in their struggle against the Israeli occupation.”
In recent years, Zaman has also appeared to equate Hamas committing terrorism to Israel defending itself. State records reviewed by the Washington Examiner show Walz’s administration has awarded over $100,000 in funding to MAS Minnesota.
“If Palestinians are punished for electing Hamas, why is Israel not punished for electing this genocidal maniac as its leader?” Zaman said in May 2021. He was replying to former Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, who stated, “I’ve killed lots of Arabs in my life — and there’s no problem with that,” in the context of catching terrorists.
Upon Minnesota Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party Chairman Ken Martin posting on social media last year that he was “beyond heartbroken” to learn Israelis he knew were “brutally killed or kidnapped” on Oct. 7, Zaman replied that Martin’s group “cannot be joined at the hip to apartheid Israel and still hope to court the Muslim vote.”
To Sam Westrop, a terrorism researcher and analyst at the Middle East Forum think tank, Walz’s ties to Zaman shows anti-Israel extremists may be given a platform in a potential Harris-Walz administration. Harris leads former President Donald Trump by 0.5%, according to a RealClearPolitics polling average.
“It is astounding that with all the available public reporting and information about the iniquities of Imam Asad Zaman and MAS Minnesota that Gov. Walz has repeatedly given public platforms and taxpayer money to this extremist,” Westrop told the Washington Examiner. “Across the country, Islamists hungry for government support will surely welcome Walz as vice president.”
The Muslim American Society was once described by federal prosecutors as being “founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States,” court records show. The MAS, which the United Arab Emirates designated as a terrorist group in 2014, came under fire in 2019 after a video surfaced online of children at an event held by its Philadelphia chapter calling for the murder of Jews.
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“We will chop off their heads, and we will liberate the sorrowful and exalted Al-Aqsa Mosque,” two young girls said at the event, according to the Times of Israel.
Walz’s office and Minnesota’s Muslim American Society did not reply to requests for comment.
