Video shows California imams voice hatred for Jews, praise or deny October 7
Compilation of religious leaders shows sermons steeped in hatred of West, ‘colonizers’ and ‘Zionist dogs’; one says it’s ‘time to make Zionists feel very uncomfortable on campus’
Numerous imams across California have been giving mosque sermons that are filled with praise for Hamas’s shock October 7 terror onslaught on Israel, hateful, antisemitic diatribes about Jews and apparent calls for violence, according to a video compilation translated and posted by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI).
The American watchdog group, which monitors and analyzes media in a host of languages including Arabic, Persian, Urdu and Turkish, noted that “in our extensive monitoring, our researchers have not found a single sermon denouncing Hamas or the October 7 attacks.”
The organization said researchers monitored Sunni and Shia imams from major mosques, leading Muslim organizations, and other leaders associated with universities across the Golden State. It did not specify exactly the number of individuals or sermons monitored, but highlighted hate speech comments from at least 11 religious leaders in the compilation.
One imam in Santa Clara gave a December 13, 2023 speech in English at the Muslim Community Association in the city where he claimed that Zionism was “infused with white supremacy,” and that Jews were “not Semites” but “Europeans who converted to Judaism while in Europe.”
The imam, named as Amir Abdel Malik Ali of Masjid Al-Islam, accused Jews of “assassinating” biblical “prophets” and charged that “God-consciousness” was “spreading all over the world because of Gaza.”
“These Zionists know they are in trouble,” he said. “They also see that the Palestinians have more support than any other time in history,” in the wake of the October 7 massacre. On that date, thousands of Palestinian terrorists slaughtered 1,200 people across southern Israel, mostly civilians, and abducted 253 people, amid brutal atrocities documented in part by the terrorists themselves.
“You are the new Nazis, this is who you are and this is how we are coming at you,” the imam said, according to a recorded video of the speech. He went on to say terror attacks against America, ostensibly by radical Islamists, were actually false flag operations by Jews.
Sermons By California Imams In Support Of October 7th Attack #MEMRI #October7 pic.twitter.com/3NfNHE3BAH
— MEMRI (@MEMRIReports) January 24, 2024
Another imam, Mohammad S. Ahmed, gave a Friday sermon in Torrance in December in which he said, also in English, that “the Children of Israel have a long history of cowardice… and wickedness… and murder and occupation… Allah has punished them for this.”
Among those in the compilation was also Dr. Khaled Abou El Fadl, a UCLA law professor, who accused Israelis and Americans of lying about the October 7 atrocities.
Taher Herzallah, the director of outreach and grassroots organization at the American Muslims for Palestine, also appeared in the compilation giving a speech in December at a San Diego mosque in which he said it was “time to make the Zionists feel very uncomfortable on campus,” a reference to the anti-Israel protests on university campuses that have seen a sharp uptick in antisemitic incidents and harassment of Jewish students.
“Zionists are really going to regret the day they made Muslims their enemy,” he said in his speech.
“October 7 showed that the most poor, under-resourced, devastated, starving, people of the world… have destroyed the veneer of superiority that the West and the colonizers have fed us for generations,” he said, adding that Gazans and Yemenis “are leading a fight against the most powerful superpowers in this world. Allahu Akbar!”
He cited recent research that showed Americans aged 18-24 were not only more likely to support the Palestinians, “they support the resistance!”
“This is the moment, this is the time to agitate, to make the Zionists feel very uncomfortable on campus,” he said.
“Free Palestine from the river to the sea,” he said. “We don’t follow their moral authority… We will enforce, we will bring the rules that Allah gave us to this Earth, because that’s what we were sent for.”
Marc Manley, an imam who gave a speech at the Middle Ground Muslim Center in Upland, California, said Israel “would hang like the dogs they are” and was “fabricating videos like a Hollywood studio” of the October 7 massacre, as heard in the compilation.
“Oh Allah, annihilate the Zionist dogs in Israel,” he said in the sermon.
