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Dearborn Mayor Abdullah Hammoud is scheduled to speak next month at a major Shiite Muslim convention in the Toronto area alongside several religious figures with controversial public records.
Speaker Sayed Moustafa Qazwini, a California cleric, falsely accused Israeli intelligence of supporting ISIS and later said he hoped to die a martyr like the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Speaker Nazar al-Qatari was reported to have urged Shiite worshippers to fight for Khamenei and join Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces.
The Universal Muslim Association of America, or UMAA, will hold its annual convention from October 9 to 11 at the Hilton Toronto/Markham Suites Conference Centre & Spa in Markham, Ontario. UMAA bills the gathering as its 24th annual convention and says on its official convention page that more than 5,000 Shiite Muslims are expected to attend the event, titled “The Next Chapter: From Identity to Impact.”
The program also includes journalist Mehdi Hasan. In remarks from more than a decade ago, Hasan described non-Muslims as people who “live their lives as animals” and separately compared atheists to “cattle.”
Cleric Blamed Israel for ISIS
Speaker Qazwini, founder and director of California’s Islamic Educational Center of Orange County, attracted attention in 2017 after falsely claiming during a sermon that ISIS and other terrorist organizations were supported by Israeli intelligence and that ISIS officers had been trained in Israel.
A 2024 report by George Washington University’s Program on Extremism documented a 2009 sermon in which Qazwini referred to Israelis as “enemies of God” and “enemies of humanity” and said Muslims had to be “tough and aggressive” toward them.
The report also documented a May 2024 sermon in which Qazwini accused American politicians of enabling Israel’s war in Gaza and said some U.S. senators were “worse than the Nazis” and “worse than Hitler.”
GWU researchers further highlighted Qazwini’s past comments about Hamas. In remarks cited by the report, Qazwini said a person seeking to “free his country” should not necessarily be considered a terrorist and invoked George Washington and Abraham Lincoln as comparisons. Following the Hamas-led October 7, 2023 attack, the report said Qazwini cited a Quranic verse concerning permission to fight after being wronged.
The same investigation found that Qazwini had been a regular contributor to Islam Oriente, a Spanish-language project associated with Iran’s Al-Mustafa International University. GWU described the platform as part of Al-Mustafa’s efforts to disseminate Iranian government ideology in Spanish-speaking communities.
The university itself was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2020. Treasury said Al-Mustafa served as a recruitment platform for the IRGC-Quds Force, including for IRGC-QF-led foreign militias fighting in Syria.
More recently, Qazwini publicly mourned Khamenei following his death in 2026. As Jewish Onliner previously reported, Qazwini described Khamenei as a martyr and then expressed a personal wish: “I pray I exit this life as a martyr, just like Khamenei. I want to die with martyrdom, not in a hospital bed. We ask Allah every day that we are killed and martyred in His path.”
Speaker Nazar al-Qatari Urged Worshippers to Fight for Ali Khamenei
Speaker Nazar al-Qatari has also publicly expressed support for the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
During the 2014 ISIS advance through Iraq, journalist Nicolas Pelham reported from Najaf that speaker al-Qatari appeared before Shiite worshippers dressed in military fatigues.
In his account for The New York Review of Books, Pelham wrote that al-Qatari told worshippers they were obligated to fight for then-Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and to join the Hashd al-Shaabi, or Popular Mobilization Forces.
Al-Qatari’s support for Khamenei also appeared openly in Iranian state media.
Iranian Arabic-language network Al-Kawthar published a poem performed by al-Qatari before Khamenei in Tehran. In it, he praised Khamenei as a leader of Islam and a central figure in the “resistance,” credited him with the resistance’s success in Lebanon and concluded by declaring that no other leader would be accepted.
UMAA’s U.S. and UN Status
GWU’s 2024 investigation distinguishes UMAA from Muslim Congress, which it describes as a project launched to spread the Iranian regime’s views and build support for it among American Muslims. The report says Muslim Congress established itself as an alternative to UMAA and notes that UMAA recognizes Iraqi Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani as its religious authority.
UMAA states that it is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization. United Nations records also list the Universal Muslim Association of America as an NGO holding special consultative status with the UN Economic and Social Council, or ECOSOC, since 2014. UMAA says it regularly participates in initiatives connected to that status.