Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein urged President-elect Donald Trump's inauguration committee to cancel a planned benediction by Shiite Imam Husham al-Husainy for his "alarming" history in connection with statements made about Hezbollah and Jews.
"It would send a terrible message and place a black mark on President Trump's new term to give an antisemite and Hezbollah apologist a prominent platform at the Trump inauguration," Klein said in a statement Thursday.
"Americans — including unprecedented numbers of American Jews — voted for President Trump in the belief that he will once again make antisemitism unacceptable in America — and have long awaited Donald Trump's return to the presidency on January 20th. Don't mar that day."
According to the inauguration program, al-Husainy, of Dearborn, Michigan, is one of four religious leaders scheduled to give a benediction at the Trump inauguration. The others are the Rev. Lorenzo Sewell, senior pastor of the 180 Church in Detroit; Rabbi Ari Berman, the president of Yeshiva University in New York; and the Rev. Frank Mann, of the Roman Catholic Diocese of Brooklyn.
The Middle East Forum, in a recent document, said the imam is "pro-Hezbollah," the Jewish News Syndicate reported.
In 2006, al-Husainy "held the picture of Hezbollah leader Nasrallah aloft on the stage" while speaking at a rally supporting the Lebanese organization, and a year later refused to call Hezbollah a terror group during a TV news interview.
Further, the report said that at a 2015 rally hosted at the Karbalaa Islamic Educational Center in Dearborn, where he serves, he "wished death" on Saudi Arabia, called Saudis "agents of the Jews" and accused the country of using "Zionist" planes to attack Yemen.
Al-Husainy, an Iraqi-American, supported Trump in October during a Republican media call, according to the Detroit Free Press.
"I am supporting Donald Trump because he opposes gay marriage and he is the most Christian person in the election," al-Husainy said. "He will return us to conservative values, and I am a Muslim and I will stand with whoever opposes gay marriage."
Trump has not called for a federal ban on same-sex marriage.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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