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This Saturday, October 11, 2025, Palm Beach County Commissioner Gregg Weiss along with Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office (PBSO) Major Christopher Keane and Captain Byron Smith are scheduled to participate in a conference titled “Mercy to Mankind: Celebrating the Life of the Holy Prophet Muhammad.” The gathering will take place at the Al-Amin Center of Florida (ACF) in Boynton Beach and is co-sponsored by the South Florida Muslim Federation (SFMF) (of which ACF is a member) and the American Muslim Advocacy Network (AMAN).
The participation of these public officials is troubling. SFMF has, in consecutive years, organized pro-Hamas conferences that glorified the perpetrators of the October 7, 2023 “Al-Aqsa Flood” terrorist massacre in Israel. By appearing at an event backed by the same organizers, Weiss, Keane, and Smith risk lending credibility to a network that has repeatedly provided a platform for hatred and the celebration of terrorism.
2025 SFMF Conference Features Yahya Sinwar Mugs
Earlier this year, the 2025 Florida Muslim Conference, organized by the South Florida Muslim Federation, was held at the government-run Coral Springs Center for the Arts. The event was promoted as a family-friendly cultural weekend. In reality, it featured blatant pro-Hamas propaganda – including the sale of merchandise glorifying Yahya Sinwar, the Hamas leader who masterminded the October 7 massacre that left 1,200 Israelis murdered and hundreds of others kidnapped.
At the conference’s widely advertised Grand Bazaar, attendees encountered a booth selling mugs modeled after the popular ‘Stanley’ tumbler, containing Sinwar’s image along with Arabic words reading “The Martyr Leader.” This was not some hidden item in a corner stall; the booth was featured in the event’s official promotional video, released by the organizers themselves.
The same promotional footage showed conference speaker and UFC athlete Belal Muhammad posing with an attendee holding a shirt emblazoned with two masked Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) gunmen – a group, like Hamas, designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) by the U.S. government. The video also showed conference speaker Siraj Wahhaj, a named “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, who publicly praised the bombing’s spiritual leader, the “Blind Sheikh” Omar Abdel Rahman.
One of the main sponsors of the event was the U.S. branch of Islamic Relief, a group that has been banned by multiple nations for alleged ties to terrorism. Israel has directly accused the charity of acting as a front organization for Hamas operations in Gaza.
2024 SFMF Conference Features Speakers Glorifying Hamas Terrorists
The 2025 event followed the collapse of another SFMF gathering one year earlier – the 2024 Florida Muslim Conference, scheduled to be held at the Fort Lauderdale Marriott Coral Springs Hotel & Convention Center. That conference was canceled by hotel management after evidence provided by this author revealed a program featuring pro-Hamas and anti-Jewish speakers that posed a serious security risk to the public.
Among the advertised 2024 conference participants were Naima Khan-Ghany, who was expelled from two Broward County School Board committees for posting material on social media claiming Jews are “Satanic,” and Yasemin Kanar (“The Real Yaz”), who, right after the October 7 massacre, posted material on social media glorifying Hamas kidnappers and stated that “all of Hollywood is run by Zionist Jews and promoting pedophilia.”
Like the 2025 conference, the 2024 conference was sponsored by Islamic Relief.
Public Servants Endorsing Extremism
Given this documented history of extremism, it is astonishing that Commissioner Gregg Weiss and PBSO Major Keane and Captain Smith are now lending their names to and compromising their reputations by participating in an SFMF-sponsored conference. They are not attending an innocuous cultural celebration; they are endorsing a group that has twice organized events celebrating Hamas terrorists – first through speakers glorifying Hamas and then via merchandise honoring Yahya Sinwar himself.
Public officials and law enforcement vow to both protect and serve their constituents and communities. They have a duty to exercise due diligence before associating with any organization, particularly one with a record of promoting hatred and terrorism. By participating in this weekend’s event, just days after worldwide commemorations for the anniversary of the brutal October 7 massacre, they risk validating a group that continues to glorify mass murderers while cloaking its activities in the language of faith and cultural pride.
Commissioner Weiss and the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Office should reconsider their participation and publicly condemn any conference or organization that celebrates the killers of innocent men, women, and children. Silence or naïveté is no longer acceptable.
If the Marriott could take a stand against hate, surely our public servants can too. The people of Palm Beach County deserve leaders who will stand firmly with America’s allies and against Hamas – not share a stage with those who glorify its crimes.
Beila Rabinowitz, Director of Militant Islam Monitor, contributed to this report.