HOW DID HE GET ELECTED?! London's Mayor Actually Defended Terrorists Including the Mother of a 9/11 Hijacker

In 2004, he participated in a pro-Palestinian conference organized by Friends of Al-Aqsa, a group that previously published works by Holocaust denier Paul Eisen. He was joined by Daud Abdullah and Ibrahim Hewitt. Abdullah was part of the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB), which at the time boycotted Holocaust Memorial Day. Hewitt’s organization, Interpal, was added to the U.S. Treasury’s list of Specially Designated Global Terrorist organizations for its work funneling money to Hamas.



That same year, Khan also defended the influential cleric Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, an Islamic scholar and prominent Muslim Brotherhood member who was labelled one of the “sheikhs of death” in a petition signed by 2,500 Muslim intellectuals to raise awareness of those who incite violence in the name of religion. Al-Qaradawi is, by any reasonable measure, an extremist. He supports Palestinian violence against Israel, and following the Iraqi insurgency in 2003 encouraged the “abduction and killing of Americans in Iraq [as] a [religious] obligation.” He has been barred entry to the United States (1999), the United Kingdom (2008), and France (2012).



While Khan was chair of the MCB’s legal affairs committee, the council defended Al-Qaradawi, calling him, “a voice of reason and understanding,” and claiming he was being smeared by “the Zionist lobby.” Khan himself said “there is consensus among Islamic scholars that Mr. Al-Qaradawi is not the extremist that he is painted as being.”



In 2006, Khan joined Azzam Tamimi, a Palestinian activist who supports Hamas and Hezbollah, at a rally against the Muhammad cartoons that were sparking violence across the globe. Khan has also taken part in several events organized by Stop Political Terror, a group that counted among its supporters Anwar al-Awlaki, the influential al-Qaeda cleric who was killed in 2011 by a U.S. drone strike.



To top it all off, just days before the election a video emerged, from 2009, showing Khan in an interview with an Iran-backed news agency calling moderate Muslims “Uncle Toms.” He made these comments when he was in charge of fighting extremism as minister for community cohesion.