TENSIONS BETWEEN THE American Muslim Association and parts of New Jersey’s Jewish community date back to February 2004 when Rep. Bill Pascrell (D-Dist. 8) and then Sen. Jon Corzine addressed the AMU’s annual community brunch.

According to an article in the New York Sun, two mosques that were among the event’s 11 sponsors had alleged ties to Muslim terrorist groups.

At the time, AMU’s president, Mohammed Younes, told the Sun he “did not know everywhere their money was going, and they would not have meant to give to Hamas.”

Last week, Oren Segal, codirector of the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, told NJ Jewish News he had concerns “because so many members of the Muslim community are associated with the Islamic Center of Paterson [Passaic County], which was linked with the Holy Land Foundation.”

The Holy Land Foundation was shut down by the United States in 2001 amid accusations that the group provided support to the Palestinian group Hamas. At the time of the 2004 brunch, Younes was on the board of the Islamic Center, whose cofounder was alleged by the FBI to have raised funds for Hamas in the mid-1990s.

Segal also said the American Muslim Union “has sponsored rallies in New York and New Jersey which were pretty anti-Israel.”

Yehudit Barsky, director of the division on Middle East and international terrorism for the American Jewish Committee, said some AMU sponsors helped raise money for the Holy Land Foundation and the Islamic Association for Palestine.

“It is true these groups no longer exist,” said Barsky of the defunct charities.

But she chided AMU member organizations for failing to denounce Hamas and Hizbullah.

“None of the groups working with them have dissociated themselves from them. On the contrary, they were defending them.”

The master of ceremonies at the AMU’s March 11 brunch, Waheed Khalid, has disputed the critics since they first made those charges.

Khalid is a Pakistani-born businessman who has lived in America for the past 35 years. A retired telecommunications executive, he currently operates gas stations in Keyport and Scotch Plains, and chairs AMU chapters in both Bergen and Union counties.

“I am certain by now that no matter what we do to condemn terrorism by anybody and any entity, it is not going to be enough,” he told NJJN. “Every time we do it, somebody raises the bar and says, ‘You didn’t do this’ or ‘you didn’t do that.’ But when you condemn terrorism by anybody and any entity, you are condemning everybody who commits terrorism. If that is not considered enough, then I don’t know what else we can do.”

Referring to “the other side of the coin,” Khalid said, “We have never heard condemnation of killing of innocent people by the Israeli army. We never ask. We never demanded you should denounce. We’ve been on the ropes always.”

Khalid said he believes most American Muslims “are not saying that Israel should be wiped out from the map. They believe Israel should be safe and secure as a country.” But he added that Palestinians live “in miserable conditions” and that the Israelis promise “there will be no more settlements and yet there are new ones every day. If we can settle that issue, the majority of the terrorism will disappear from this world.”