Top Hillary Clinton confidante Huma Abedin played no formal role in a radical Muslim journal — even though she was listed as an editor on the hate-filled periodical’s masthead for a dozen years, a campaign rep claimed Sunday.
“My understanding is that her name was simply listed on the masthead in that period,” Clinton spokesman Nick Merrill said hours after The Post broke the bombshell story. “She did not play a role in editing at the publication.”
Merrill said Abedin was just a figurehead and not actually on staff at the Saudi-based and -funded Journal of Minority Muslim Affairs, which featured radically anti-feminist views and backed strict Islamic laws roundly criticized for oppressing women.
A journalism major at George Washington University, Abedin, 40, was listed as “assistant editor” of the journal from 1996 to 2008, when her name was removed from the staff box and she went to work for Clinton at the State Department.
Her brother, who was an associate editor, and a sister, also employed as an assistant editor, are listed as staff members.
Abedin’s Pakistani mother, Saleha Mahmood Abedin, remains editor-in-chief.
Merrill repeatedly refused to say if Abedin was paid during her tenure at the publication.
He also declined to say whether Clinton, who has made championing women’s rights a centerpiece of her campaign, was aware of her longtime aide’s position at the publication or its extremist views.
The pair have been close since 1996, when Abedin — often described as Clinton’s “second daughter” — was a White House intern assigned to the then-first lady.
Since then, she has worked for Clinton on her Senate campaigns and at the Clinton Foundation and is now the vice chairwoman of her presidential bid.
The journal supported a strict interpretation of Islamic Sharia laws, which call for beheadings, require women to cover their bodies and faces and advocate death for “infidels” — which in their view includes just about everyone but the most extreme religious hardliners.
The publication also blamed the US for the 9/11 terror attacks, which were carried out largely by Saudi nationals.
Typical fare in the publication includes a 1996 piece titled “Women’s Rights Are Islamic Rights,” which argues that single moms, working moms and gay couples with children should not be recognized as families.
It also maintained that revealing dress “directly translates into unwanted results of sexual promiscuity and irresponsibility and indirectly promote violence against women.”
In another 1996 article, Abedin’s mother wrote that Clinton was advancing a “very aggressive and radically feminist” agenda that was un-Islamic because it focused on empowering women.
“‘Empowerment’ of women does more harm than benefit the cause of women or their relations with men,” Saleha Mahmood Abedin wrote.