Hatem Al Bazian

Bazian also had ties to KindHearts, a defunct fundraising entity that had its assets frozen on suspicion that it was providing material support to the Hamas terrorist group. Bazian was also a frequent speaker at events for the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP), a pro-Palestinian advocacy group established with startup money from Hamas leader Mousa Abu Marzook. ²

Bazian advised Zaytuna College, a Muslim liberal-arts college in California, as well as chairman of the board of directors at AMP and the Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA). ^{3 4 5 6}

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on the state of Israel, Bazian posted on X (formerly Twitter) stated, “Palestinians are calling for freedom, dignity and true expression of solidarity!” ⁷

Education and Academic Career

Hatem Al Bazian earned his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley in Near Eastern Studies in 2000. His Ph.D. thesis, “Al-Quds in Islamic Consciousness: A Textual Survey of Muslim Claims and Rights to the Sacred City,” investigates the Muslim relationship to Jerusalem and the Palestine region. ⁸

Bazian founded the Islamophobia Studies Center. He is also editor-in-chief of the Islamophobia Studies Journal, co-founder and president of the International Islamophobia Studies Research Association (IISRA), and advised the 2021 United Nations Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Religion or Belief report on “Countering Islamophobia/Anti-Muslim Hatred to Eliminate Discrimination and Intolerance Based on Religion or Belief.” He also contributed to the 2018 Carter Center report “Countering the Islamophobia Industry Toward More Effective Strategies.” ⁶

Bazain is also chairman of the board of the Muslim Legal Fund of America. He has authored five books, the latest as of early 2025 being Erasing the Human: Collapse of the Postcolonial World and the Refugee-Immigration Crisis; edited eight volumes of the Islamophobia Studies Journal; and edited hundreds of published articles. ⁶

In 2009, Bazian co-founded Zaytuna College, the first accredited Muslim liberal-arts college in the United States. He is also a senior lecturer in the Departments of Middle Eastern Languages and Cultures and Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. From 2002 through 2007, Bazian also worked as an adjunct professor of law at Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to Berkeley, Bazian worked as a visiting professor in Religious Studies at Saint Mary’s College of California from 2001 to 2007. He was also an advisor to the Religion, Politics and Globalization Center at UC Berkeley. ⁶

KindHearts Controversy

Earlier in his career, Hatem Al Bazian was a fundraiser for a pro-Palestinian organization called KindHearts. ²

Following the December 2001 asset freeze and law-enforcement actions against the Hamas-affiliated Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) and the Al Qaeda-affiliated Global Relief Foundation (GRF), former GRF official Khaled Smaili established KindHearts in January 2002. Congressional testimony alleged that KindHearts might have been established to continue the fundraising efforts of both HLF and GRF following their respective closures. ^{9 2}

From 2002 to 2006, KindHearts claimed it was cooperating with the U.S Department of the Treasury and had complied with the U.S Department of the Treasury’s Anti-Terrorist Financing Voluntary Guidelines. However, in January 2006, the Department of Justice started serving grand-jury subpoenas on KindHearts board members and its accountants at Ernst & Young, requiring them to produce all records relating to KindHearts from January 2002 to February 2006. In February 2006, the United States Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) froze the assets of KindHearts and executed a search warrant seizing all records, computers, equipment, publications from headquarters and the residence of President Khaled Smaili. ^{10 11}

The Treasury claimed KindHearts had its assets frozen for providing “support for terrorism behind the façade of charitable giving,” specifically for allegedly providing aid to the terrorist organization Hamas. ¹² KindHearts resisted the allegations, eventually closing its doors while the federal government paid its legal fees and removed the group from its terrorist list. ¹³

Bazian was one of two featured speakers at a 2004 KindHearts fundraising dinner in California, with the other speaker being Mohammed el-Mezain, who would later be sentenced in 2009 for his connections to the HLF. ^{14 15}

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP)

Hatem Al Bazian is the founder of American Muslims for Palestine (AMP) and remains AMP’s national chairman of the board of directors as of January 2025.  ⁵ AMP, founded in 2006, is an anti-Israel organization with strong ties to pro-Hamas individuals and organizations. While AMP refers to itself as an educational organization focused primarily on raising awareness for Palestinian causes, it has been described by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) as “promot[ing] extreme anti-Israel and anti-Zionist views.” ^{16 17} ADL has also criticized AMP for its support of the college campus-based radical-left group National Students for Justice in Palestine. ¹⁸

Multiple individuals associated with AMP have ties to organizations that have been alleged by the federal government to have offered support to terrorist entities such as Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ). ² At a 2014 AMP conference, a lecturer invited attendees to “navigate the fine line between legal activism and material support for terrorism.” ¹⁹ AMP has been accused of serving as a de facto rebrand of a group called the Islamic Association for Palestine (IAP) that shut down shortly after a 2004 judgment that implicated it in providing “material support” to Hamas. A subsequent lawsuit alleged that AMP had essentially the same leaders, mission, and initiatives as the IAP. ²⁰ AMP has contested these claims, denying the allegedly shared leadership and insisting that there was a two-year gap between the old organization shutting down and its own launch. ²¹

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attack on the state of Israel and the resulting Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, AMP began organizing a “Ceasefire Now Resolution” sponsored by then-U.S. Representative Cori Bush (D-MO), which secured endorsements from more than a dozen other Democratic U.S. Representatives. ²²

AMP also attacked the Biden administration for allegedly downplaying the Palestinian civilian death toll from Israeli airstrikes and shelling. In a November 2023 statement, AMP advocacy director Ayah Ziyadeh called then-President Joe Biden’s apparent dismissal of the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry’s casualty statistics “dehumanizing.” Speaking to the Turkish government’s Anadolu Agency, Ziyadeh also accused Israel of “genocide, ethnic cleansing, mass murder, and collective punishment.” ²³

Nihad Awad, executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), was invited to speak at one of AMP’s annual conventions following the October 7 attacks, at which he claimed, “yes, I was happy to see people breaking the siege and throwing down the shackles of their own land, and walk free into their land, which they were not allowed to walk in. And yes, the people of Gaza have the right to self-defense, have the right to defend themselves, and yes, Israel, as an occupying power, does not have that right to self-defense.” ²⁴

Zaytuna College

In 2009, Hatem Al Bazian helped advise Zaytuna College, an educational institution that claims to be the first accredited Muslim liberal arts college in the United States. ²⁵ It is based in Berkeley, California, and had approximately 70 students enrolled across its undergraduate and graduate-level programs as of 2024. ^{26 27} The college claims to combine the liberal-arts tradition of the West with the “Muslim classics.” ²⁸

In 1995, Zaytuna College co-founder Hamza Yusuf claimed Judaism was a “racist religion.” ²⁹ In 1996, at an Islamic Circle of North America conference, he called the United States a “country that has little to be proud of in its past and less to be proud of in the present…I became Muslim in part because I did not believe in the false gods of this society whether we call them Jesus or democracy or the Bill of Rights.” ³⁰ In a 1998 interview, Yusuf also complained about “…what happened in the 19th century with the abdication of Islamic Law and the usurpation of its place by Western legal systems.” ³¹ Yusuf retracted several of these claims following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001. ^{3 32}

In 1992, Zaytuna co-founder Imam Zaid Shakir claimed that the Muslim world must “use…weaponry against the enemies of Islam.” ³³ In 2009, Shakir claimed that Islam “doesn’t permit us to hijack airplanes that are filled with civilian people, noncombatant people…if you hijack an airplane filled with the 82nd Airborne, that’s something else.” ³⁴ Shakir also claimed the bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Lebanon in 1983 by Lebanese-based registered terrorist group Hezbollah may not have been a terrorist attack. ³⁵

In 2006, a New York Times article characterized Shakir as making comments suggesting he hoped that one day “the United States would be a Muslim country ruled by Islamic law.” ³⁶ In 2013, he stated that “if Islam rules” the world, Christians and Jews “won’t be equal with the Muslim.” ⁴

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)

Hatem Al Bazian is a co-founder of the anti-Israel advocacy and organizing group Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP). Its efforts include protesting Jewish speakers, supporting the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement, and supporting student groups on college campuses that back the BDS movement. ^{37 38}

The left-of-center watchdog group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has alleged that SJP has received financial support from American Muslims for Palestine (AMP). The ADL also claimed that SJP is a “primary” organizer of anti-Israel boycotts and other activities on U.S. college campuses. ^{38 39}

Following the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, SJP released a “tool kit” entitled “Day of Resistance” for activists and members for pro-Palestinian protests, also proclaiming, “glory to our resistance.” ⁴⁰ The tool kit also included illustrations containing images of protesters, the Palestinian flag, and a paraglider; Hamas terrorists used paragliders during their attacks on October 7, including one attack at the Supernova music festival in Southern Israel where Hamas members used them to navigate over the border from Gaza near the festival and proceeded to kill several hundred people. ^{41 40}

Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA)

Hatem al Bazian is chairman of the board of directors at the Muslim Legal Fund of America. ⁴² The Muslim Legal Fund of America (MLFA) was founded in 2001 by civil-rights activists who claimed there was a rise in anti-Muslim discrimination and hate crimes after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. ⁴³ MLFA opposed the 2002 creation of the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System (NSEERS), which requires the U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to record the arrival, stay, and departure of certain individuals from countries chosen based on an analysis of possible national security threats. ⁴⁴

MLFA is vocally opposed to Israeli policies regarding Palestinians, and encourages the U.S. government to curb aid to Israel. ⁴⁵

MLFA condemned the prosecution of the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) on federal charges that the group provided “material support” to Hamas. ⁴⁶ In 2008, five former leaders of HLF were convicted of 108 counts of providing support to terrorism, having funneled $12.4 million to the leaders of Hamas. ⁴⁷ MLFA calls the outcome of this trial “shocking and unjust,” while speaking out against naming over 300 American Muslims and groups as “unindicted co-conspirators.” ⁴⁶

Muslim Legal Fund of America is also a part of the U.S. Council of Muslim Organizations (USCMO), an umbrella organization of Muslim-American groups in the U.S., some of which have alleged ties to terrorist organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas. ^{48 49 50} USCMO was formed in 2013, and Khalil Meek, co-founder and then-director of MLFA, also helped lead the founding of USCMO and spoke at the organization’s inaugural event. ⁵¹

USCMO made a statement regarding the October 7, 2023, Hamas terror attacks on Israel, claiming it stood in solidarity with the Palestinian people against what it called an Israeli “occupation” and “inhumane siege.” USCMO also called on the U.S. and international community to pressure Israel to withdraw from the Palestinian territories. ⁵²