The race for a Congress seat in Massachusetts is getting interesting. Nadeem Mazen, who many see as being the most visible Muslim politician in the state, is running for Congress. He is currently serving a second term on Cambridge City Council, and his connections to radical Muslim values are already clear.

Mazen made his campaign announcement early in the week. This is alarming on many levels, including the fact that he has several known ties to individuals and organizations that are extremists and even one with documented links to supporting terrorism. The close relationship between dangerous people within the Muslim community and Mazen is enough to caution anyone considering voting for him.

The road to Mazen becoming a member of Congress does not seem to be an easy one. He is already expressing concern that those around him do not understand his faith or what it means to him. Mazen explained in a recent interview:

“People don’t understand what it means to me to have a Muslim faith and to believe that faith compels me to serve every American and to serve the Constitution.”

It is not clear how the Muslim religion drives Mazen to serve all members of his community as he is focused on being able to further the agenda of those within his faith. He depends on the liberal vote to look beyond their questions about his faith and vote under the need for diversity within Congress. While many of his on-going activities show a deep connection to Muslim groups, Mazen is banking on those from outside of faith to vote him into office.

Mazen is also counting on voters to ignore his often once removed connections to radical groups and individuals within the Muslim community. While his actions may not always directly support some of these groups, the link is there.

The first example of this type of connection is the role Mazen played in the local chapter of the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR). He is listed as the founding member of the group’s Massachusetts chapter. CAIR has a long and turbulent history that included being blacklisted by the FBI for ties to terrorism supports. They are widely believed to be a Hamas front organization that has also been listed for terrorist ties by countries outside of the United States. The issues between CAIR and the government of the United States as:

“CAIR is so toxic in American political circles that the Obama Justice Department has had a ban on working with CAIR in place since 2009. After the 2008 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial established “at least a prima facie case as to CAIR’s involvement in a conspiracy to support Hamas,” the Obama Justice Department cut all ties with the group. In 2014, the UAE designated CAIR as a terrorist organization.”

Shockingly enough, CAIR is not the only tie to radical work that is connected to Mazen. In his current role as the Cambridge councilor, Mazen has been described as “…an aggressive anti-police activist and one of the most vocal critics of the Justice Department’s counter-terrorism efforts in New England. Mazen has also painted secular Muslims as traitors.”

The Mazen ties are not anything new, although in the past it seems he was a little less vocal about the connections. His ties to the one time fundraiser for Al Qaeda Suheil Laher date back to 2002. Mazen served as the president of the MIT Muslim Students Association. This organization was overseen by Laher and helped to establish some questionable ties between MIT and Al Qaeda. These relationships have become the focus of a mini-documentary entitled “Al Qaeda‘s Base At MIT.”

After the initial connections at MIT, Mazen seemed to stay out of the public eye for awhile. He surfaced with CAIR and started a group called MassMuslims. They have promoted events with Omar Suleiman, who is “…a radical Islamist preacher who describes homosexuality as a “disease” and a “repugnant shameless sin.”

This same organization invited the extremist preacher Yasir Qadhi to speak at Harvard. Qadhi speaks out against the Holocaust as he says it was merely propaganda. He also seems to support the efforts of Hitler as being more accidental than anything because according to Qadhi,”…Hitler never intended to mass-destroy the Jews.”