Rep. Brian Mast (R-FL) has launched an effort to block British Labour Member of Parliament for Bradford West, Naseem (Naz) Shah, from entering the U.S next week. In a letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken, Mast urged the denial of Shah’s entry, citing ties to U.K. networks of the designated terrorist organization Hamas.
He wrote: “There is substantial public evidence that MP Shah has connections to known terrorist organizations. It is imperative that the United States send a clear signal to the world that politicians who support terrorists are not welcome on American soil.”
Naz Shah is visiting the United States to give the keynote address at a D.C. conference on November 13th organized by the Muslim Public Affairs Council (MPAC), a prominent American Islamist organization.
In 2021, Naz Shah spoke on a Panel organized by the NGO Palestine Return Centre. Its Director, Majed Al-Zeer, was recently designated a Global Terrorist by the U.S for links to Hamas. Al-Zeer is close to senior Hamas officials, including the terror group’s late chairman Ismail Haniyeh.
Mast also highlighted that Naz Shah also raised money for the NGO Friends of Al-Aqsa. Following the October 7th attacks, one Friends of Al-Aqsa official declared that “we must normalize massacres as the status quo.” Friends of Al-Aqsa collaborates closely with Interpal, a leading Hamas charitable institution. The U.S. Department of Treasury designated Interpal as a terrorist organization in 2003, declaring, “Interpal is the fundraising coordinator of HAMAS” and that the organization helped formulate Hamas’s public relations policy.
Shah now finds herself at the center of a diplomatic controversy, but is no stranger to this at home in the U.K. In 2016, Shah was suspended by the Labour Party for antisemitic remarks. In a Facebook post, Shah shared a graphic of Israel’s outline superimposed on a map of the U.S under the headline, “Solution for Israel-Palestine Conflict – Relocate Israel into United States,” with her comment: “Problem solved.”
Shah also faced significant backlash after claiming she “accidentally” liked and retweeted a post that suggested child victims of the Grooming Gang Rape scandal should “shut their mouths for the good of diversity.”
Shah has also repeatedly appeared on the Islam Channel, a major Islamic TV station in Britain fined thousands by the U.K. government-approved regulatory authority because of antisemitic and violent extremist content.
In 2022 Shah made an impassioned speech, lamenting the British Government’s decision to boycott the Muslim Council of Britain (MCB). A previous Labour Party government blacklisted the Islamist organization after it signed the Istanbul Declaration, which a government minister declared “supports violence against foreign forces – which could include British naval personnel” and advocates “attacks on Jewish communities all around the world.”
A copy of Rep.Brian Mast’s letter to Secretary of State Blinken:
