Tim Walz’s disturbing relation to Islamists

A recent article in the Washington Examiner highlights ties between Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and the radical Muslim Imam Asad Zaman. The report said Walz, as governor of Minnesota, hosted Zaman, who reportedly pledged support to the Palestinians after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel and had previously promoted a neo-Nazi propaganda film expressing support for Adolf Hitler, at least five times. The article also points out that the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, a branch headed up by Zaman of the well-known arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in the United States, received more than $100,000 of state funding under Walz’s leadership. 

This is an example of a disturbing openness by left-wing politicians like Walz to Muslim activists who have a fascist, neo-Nazi ideology of Jew-hatred and are committed to the overthrow of the United States government and the conquest of the West. The same ideology that drives Hamas and Iran also drives Imam Zaman. The West is fighting for its very existence against an enemy most of us simply do not understand.

A recent Wall Street Journal headline read, “Iran Emerges as the Most Aggressive Foreign Threat to U.S. Election.” According to Fox News, Microsoft has revealed that Iran-backed groups are attempting to sway the U.S. election with fake news sites and by impersonating activists to sway American voters in swing states. A CNN report quotes Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines saying that Iran is attempting to covertly stoke campus protests in the United States against the Gaza war, in some cases by providing financial support. According to CBS News, the FBI arrested a Pakistani man with Iranian ties in connection with an alleged plot to assassinate former president Donald Trump.

Clearly, there is a war being waged by Islamists, not only against Israel but also against the West in general and the United States in particular. It is crucial to know your enemy. Yet many people have only a superficial understanding of who these Islamists are and what they are trying to do.

The term “Islamofascism” was tossed around a lot after 9/11, but it is used less often today, and there is a reason for that. The term signals a connection between Islam and fascism of the Nazi variety and is often deemed to be derogatory toward Muslims (and thus “Islamophobic”). But it is important to understand both the real historical connections between Nazi ideology and the kind of Islamism that is attacking Israel and the West today.

After the fall of the Ottoman Empire during World War I, a radical group of Muslims who lamented the loss of Muslim unity and power began to emerge in Egypt. This group took shape as the Muslim Brotherhood. During the 1930s, it made common cause with Nazi Germany since the two shared a common enemy, namely, Jews. Scholars such as Jeffrey Herf have documented how Nazi Germany broadcast its evil propaganda in Arabic in the Middle East from 1939 to 1945. This messaging was designed to paint Jews as the enemy of both Germans and Arabs. The race-based anti-Semitism of Nazi ideology was downplayed and replaced by a new narrative of the origins of Islam in which the Jews became the main obstacle to the triumph of Islam. This new strain of anti-Semitism took hold in Muslim Brotherhood and Palestinian Arab circles and is what we refer to today when we say “Islamism” instead of Islam.

The first step in Muslim world conquest was proposed as the recapturing of lands once ruled by Islam, such as Spain. The Jews in Palestine, and after 1948, the nation of Israel, were especially resented because they occupied a little patch of land amid the Muslim-dominated Middle East. This ideology has driven the Arab-Jewish conflicts for the past century and has become one of the main forms of anti-Semitism in the 21st century. But now, instead of linking up with the discredited and defeated Nazi movement, it links up with Marxism. The Soviet Union played a key role in the creation of the PLO, and this is how Islamofascism made common cause with communist anti-Semitism. Islamist anti-Semitism is the main driver of Islamism and one of the Three Faces of Antisemitism, according to Herf, along with anti-Semitism of the right and the left.

The Islamic Republic of Iran and its proxies are the main expression of this Islamic anti-Semitism today. But is it critical to understand that this anti-Semitism is a tool of Muslim imperialism and not an end in itself. The destruction of Israel is a step toward the conquest of Europe and eventually the world.

Radical Islamofascism is at war with the West, not just Israel. It is time to wake up to the serious geo-political issues facing us. Although we have enemies who are bent on killing us, we are half asleep.