Tim Walz repeatedly hosted Muslim cleric who celebrated Oct. 7 and shared pro-Hitler website link

What we have here is a governor and an imam. The governor is in charge of running a state. The state is Minnesota. And the imam is in charge of leading prayers in a mosque. A mosque is where mostly Muslim people gather to pray and hear Islamic teachings. When you go to pray at a mosque, an imam leads that prayer. And that prayer is given in a Mosque, led by an imam.

 

Tim Walz called Hitler-promoting cleric a ‘master teacher’ at Islamic center event - Washington Examiner

As he campaigned to be Minnesota’s next governor, Tim Walz called a Muslim cleric who promoted a pro-Adolf Hitler film a “master teacher” who offered Walz lessons over the time they “spent together,” according to footage at a 2018 event unearthed by the Washington Examiner. News of the footage comes after a spokesperson for Vice President Kamala Harris’s presidential campaign said in a Friday statement that Walz does not “have a personal relationship” with Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota. That claim was in response to a Washington Examiner report on how Walz, the 2024 Democratic vice presidential nominee, repeatedly hosted the imam at events as the governor of Minnesota. At several of those events, Zaman also spoke before Walz.

“I would like to first of all say thank you to imam,” Walz said at the unearthed 2018 event, which was hosted by Minnesota’s Muslim American Society on Feb. 16, 2018, at the South Metro Islamic Center in Rosemount, Minnesota. Standing next to Walz as he spoke was Peggy Flanagan, now the lieutenant governor in the Gopher State.

“I am a teacher, so when I see a master teacher, I know it. Over the time we’ve spent together, one of the things I’ve had the privilege of is seeing the things in life through the eye of a master teacher, to try and get the understanding,” Walz said of Zaman at the event, before discussing a prior attack at the Dar al Farooq Islamic Center in Minnesota. “It was imam talking [saying that] ‘in those times is where we find who we are, in those times is where we really see.’