2008 ISNA Speaker Hatem Bazian: “Fight the Jews,” “It’s About Time We Have an Intifada in This Country”

Continuing our look at the upcoming 2008 Islamic Society of North America convention to be held in Columbus less than a month from now, we turn to one of the featured speakers at this year’s event — Hatem Bazian. Bazian is a former fundraising speaker for Kindhearts, a HAMAS front closed by the US government in February 2006 and is listed as a specially designated terrorist organization.

Bazian has long been a regular fixture at Islamic extremist events, making all kinds of incendiary remarks. Consider, for example, a statement he made at a May 1999 American Muslim Alliance conference in California:

In the Hadith, the Day of Judgment will never happen until you fight the Jews. They are on the west side of the river, which is the Jordan River, and you’re on the east side until the trees and stones will say, oh Muslim, there is a Jew hiding behind me. Come and kill him! And that’s in the Hadith about this, this is a future battle before the Day of Judgment. (cited in Steven Emerson, American Jihad: The Terrorists Living Among Us, pp. 214-215)

And more recently at an April 2004 rally held in San Francisco in support of the Iraqi insurgency (which is still killing US troops there) we find him calling for violence against America (link to video):

Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Are you angry? [Yeah!] Well, we’ve been watching intifada in Palestine, we’ve been watching an uprising in Iraq, and the question is that what are we doing? How come we don’t have an intifada in this country? Because it seem[s] to me, that we are comfortable in where we are, watching CNN, ABC, NBC, Fox, and all these mainstream . . . giving us a window to the world while the world is being managed from Washington, from New York, from every other place in here in San Francisco: Chevron, Bechtel, [Carlyle?] Group, Halliburton; every one of those lying, cheating, stealing, deceiving individuals are in our country and we’re sitting here and watching the world pass by, people being bombed, and it’s about time that we have an intifada in this country that change[s] fundamentally the political dynamics in here. And we know every — They’re gonna say some Palestinian being too radical — well, you haven’t seen radicalism yet!

Yes, more interfaith moderates from ISNA! Be sure to check out some of our other recent ISNA-related posts:

The countdown until ISNA occupation continues . . .

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