On August 19, acting commissioner Ayman Nassar resigned from the Maryland Commission on Hate Crimes Response and Prevention, becoming the second Muslim member in 90 days to forfeit their seat following allegations of hate speech and extremism. Noticeably absent from the widespread reporting on his resignation was any discussion about what actually prompted Nassar to give up his role on the commission. The Baltimore Sun and other Maryland publications posed the story as a controversy, a he-said-she-said where Nassar and his critics lobbed hazy accusations of bigotry and discrimination at one another.
Nassar’s short-lived appointment was preceded by legislative efforts to fire his predecessor, Zainab Chaudry, who was ousted from the commission in May for social media posts comparing Hamas to “freedom fighters” and Israel to Nazi Germany. Despite facing intense public scrutiny over Chaudry’s appointment, Maryland Attorney General Anthony Brown (D) ultimately selected a more extreme replacement in Nassar.
The Middle East Forum (MEF) accused Nassar of associating with terror-linked groups and posting antisemitic and homophobic comments online. Nassar told the Baltimore Banner that MEF’s efforts to expel him were part of “a coordinated Islamophobic campaign of hate and online bullying from anti-Palestinian and anti-Muslim groups.”
Maryland citizens are left with little information from which to draw their own conclusions. Was Nassar merely the target of a coordinated smear campaign? Or did the ex-acting-commissioner’s speech and conduct truly merit his resignation?
Refusing to report on the specifics behind the allegations has allowed Nassar to claim that MEF was merely upset with his use of words like “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe Israel. Though highly inaccurate and offensive, Nassar didn’t resign his position after just two weeks on the job for muttering these common anti-Israel clichés.
To set the record straight: Nassar accused Israel of harvesting the organs of living Palestinian prisoners — a classic anti-Jewish trope echoed by hardcore antisemites (including Zainab Chaudry). He shared a social media post referring to Gaza as a “Holocaust,” and compared how “the white race was able to justify slavery 200 years ago,” with how “special interests [were] able to justify homosexuality 20 years ago.”
Nassar deleted his LinkedIn posts after they were publicized. Was he feeling guilty? (Fortunately, we collected screenshots).
After Nassar resigned, MEF unearthed teaching materials from the youth group he founded – the Islamic Leadership Institute – that refer to homosexuality as a “disorder” and claim that only heterosexuals are “normal healthy humans.” During a 2022 lecture on gender identity, Nassar described gay people and those who promote same-sex relationships as “disgusting,” “disgraceful,” “animals” who “must be destroyed.”
Journalists were also remarkably incurious about Nassar’s leadership of extremist groups. The Aafia Foundation, where Nassar serves as chairman, seeks to free “Lady Al Qaeda” Aafia Siddiqui from prison based on incredulous claims that Zionist conspirators were behind her conviction for attempted murder. Inspired by these theories, a gunman stormed a Texas synagogue in January 2022 and took Jewish hostages in hopes that they could be used to barter for Siddiqui’s release.
There’s also Nassar’s youth group, which employed an instructor who exalted in Hamas’s “great victory” on Oct. 7, when terrorists senselessly slaughtered around 1,200 people. Another radical group on Nassar’s résumé is the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR. Reporters chose to leave out the fact that Maryland delegates sought to single out and permanently ban CAIR members from serving on the state’s hate crimes panel.
Refusing to elaborate on Nassar’s membership in terror-linked groups – facts that were central to his resignation – the Baltimore Sun took the time to research and cast blame on the whistleblower, noting without context that the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University has called MEF “a right wing, anti-Islam think tank.”
More hazy accusations. However, the Saudi-funded Bridge Initiative has a bone to pick with MEF, which has criticized the academic group’s research for many years pre-dating its attacks. Moreover, MEF formally endorsed a progressive Muslim woman who applied for the hate crimes commission in a letter to Attorney General Anthony Brown – a bizarre move for a so-called right wing, anti-Islam group.
For exposing Nassar’s objectionable conduct, MEF was tarred as a partisan anti-Muslim institution, while reporters refused to give any column space to the hard-core extremist groups that cost Nassar his job. What’s more, local media told a story where both sides merely traded insults without cutting to the truth of the matter: that Maryland’s latest deposed commissioner is worthy of the names MEF called him.
Perhaps controversy sells newspapers, but in this case media outlets across Maryland sold out to a card-carrying extremist.
Benjamin Baird is the director of MEF Action, a political action initiative at the Middle East Forum.
