Sunday, July 15, 2007
And I mean to the last detail.
Hey, I know the whole Islamic Society of Boston drama is a little complex -- the lawsuits, the sweetheart land deal, the double-dealing city employee, the Middle East connections to radical American and Jew haters... But really, if you don't have the time or the cranial capacity to digest the thing, wouldn't it be better to remain silent altogether? Oh sure, I could understand a random blogger or two having a partisan go at the thing from time to time, but don't we expect more from a major MSM outlet like The Christian Science Monitor? Hahaha! I jest, I jest.
Staff writer Jane Lampman (seen here holding out anti-Zionists like Sabeel's Naim Ateek and ICAHD's Jeff Halper as some sort of antidote to Christian friends of Israel), took up the task and landed four online pages detailing the background of the case: Boston mosque rises above the fray. OK, not "detailing," exactly, more like "making a hash of."
For real information on the case: - Defending Against the Legal Jihad -- A Conversation with Attorney Jeff Robbins |
Lampman's piece is one of singular garbage, riddled with sins of omission so obvious they can only be the intentional product of a reporter on a mission. This is wonderful, because I haven't done a real paragraph-by-paragraph fisking in a long while, and I was looking for just this type of opportunity to crack my blogging knuckles and get down to it. It's long, I know, but aw heck, pixels are cheap.
I happen to have recently acquired a stack of materials from the case -- checks from the Islamic Society of Boston to Hamas front group The Holy Land Foundation, bank statements showing massive transfers to the ISB's Bank of America account from groups and individuals in Saudi Arabia, as well as statements showing millions deposited into their "secret" New Hampshire account during a period they were supposedly hard up for cash. I have liberally sprinkled samples from this stash of documents into this entry, and each one may be looked upon as a little cyber-"kick me" note taped to Lampman's back. In fact, I have so much of this stuff I will likely create a future post just to aggregate it -- and not all of it, either, since scanning it all would take way too much time. Believe me, you'll get the picture. Let's get to it:
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The lawsuits have now been settled, thanks in part to interfaith efforts for more than a year to bring the litigants together.
Settled? More like dropped outright. The defendants in the case refused to agree to anything, and, in fact, The David Project's efforts to get the City of Boston to release its paperwork on the matter continue. As we'll see in the rest of the article, Lampman makes a major issue out of the "interfaith" groups that flitted about the periphery, but they never had any discernible impact on the matter, other than the negative one of providing moral cover for this Muslim Brotherhood-connected project. The defendants never paid them any mind. This struggle is not about faith, it's about Islamist politics.
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Some (and it's not just the Jewish Community) are still concerned that a group who had a trustee that wrote that the Jews will be ‘scourged’ because of their ‘oppression, murder, and rape of the worshipers of Allah’ is looking forward to welcoming that man back into the fold as soon as his schedule allows. Some are concerned that a group who looks to radical Sheik Yousef Al-Qaradawi is building a multi-million dollar complex in our city. Others will overlook anything in order to avoid having to face ugly truths.
Who? And what does he have to do with this?
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The success will depend, it seems, on the extent to which those in the local community dwell on deep concerns associated with the Middle East situation or focus on building local ties. Boston has a history of strong Christian-Jewish relations, and post-9/11, the conversations began to embrace Muslims, including the ISB.
Oh no, let's not dwell on what's going on in Britain and the rest of Europe. Silly us. But as to the rest, I agree. Let's keep those ties strong and local. Let's keep Middle Eastern money in the Middle East. Let's keep Middle Eastern ideology in the Middle East. Let's keep Middle Eastern politics in the Middle East. Now someone explain that to the ISB.
MUSLIMS? The ISB was suing a Muslim! There are Muslims contacting defendants and bloggers sub rosa claiming they're too afraid to speak out. It's never been about "Muslims," but about things like the Muslim Brotherhood, and ties to Saudi Arabian Wahhabis...in other words, radicals and political Islam.
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Talk about lying by omission. This one actually had me laughing out loud. Picture the Imam out in the park with a pointy stick and a garbage bag skewering cigarette butts. Heck, who could be against that? Only THAT'S not what people are complaining about. The ISB got for $175K what was valued as high as $2million+. I'd like to know what other groups got comparable discounts.
The other part of the deal with the city was that they were to perform lectures on Islam and set up an Islamic Law library at Roxbury Community College (a city school). In other words, Dawa (Islamic proselytizing) for discounts. THAT'S what people are complaining about, not park maintenance.
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Riddle me this, Jane. What makes The David Project "right-leaning?" What is there position on abortion, taxes, school prayer? How about settlements, occupation, Labor v. Likud? Here's a clue: They don't take positions on those things. But these days anyone who defends Jews and Israel and doesn't roll over at the first sign of trouble is instantly labeled "right-leaning."
In fact, the emails indicate that the Herald and Fox had already run their stories. The David Project and other individuals became understandably concerned considering the information that was coming out. Responsibly worried, in fact. As one email said, "...our interest is based on the premise that some of the senior people in the ISB are supporters of terrorism and sworn enemies of America and Jews, and the construction of the mosque may be funded by Wahhabis... I think it would be extremely helpful if you would assemble in a memo exactly what we know and how we know it. Also, what we suspect and speculate, but don't know for sure. If we are going to support others to support our cause, especially in the media, we are going to need reasonably well-founded allegations."
That sounds perfectly reasonable. I say thank God for these people. Somebody needed to speak. Somebody needed to do something to slow this thing down. Instead of being thanked, they got accused of a conspiracy. And as far as instigating a 1st Amendment lawsuit, that is a perfectly common occurrence in such matters, and the examples are legion. Good on them!
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Groups and media outlets? Ha! You left out at least a dozen individuals, not groups -- a list that included a Muslim Sheik, an Episcopal Lay-Minister and a daughter of Holocaust survivors.
"The ICPL's interest was in trying to head off community damage," says Father Helmick. "Our task force [which included well-known author Rabbi HarÂold Kushner] worked for a full year to urge the parties toward mediation. The ISB was willing from the start, but the David Project resisted."
Of course the ISB was willing. They wanted to get their Wahhabi Mosque built, and under their Saudi leadership. Anything would have been OK for them. They'd have been happy to have everyone looking the other way while they funneled Brotherhood money in from the KSA. Thankfully, that didn't happen, and at least now we know even more about this group than when we started.
This is what I mean by the fact that Helmick and the rest of the busy-bodies bring absolutely nothing of substance to the table. What's that expression? When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? This is a situation of deep, substantive differences that are not simply a matter of misunderstanding. We understand too well. Far better than Helmick and Co.
Finally, a voice of reason.
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The third involves Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi of Qatar, a very prominent Muslim cleric. A reformist on issues such as support for democracy, the sheikh holds a controversial stance on suicide bombing. Opposing it in general, including 9/11 and the London bombings, he supports it when people are under occupation, such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Iraq. He has been banned from the US since 1999.
The ISB responds that Mr. Qaradawi was an honorary trustee in the 1990s but is not connected to the society today.
Garbage. All garbage. There's also Osama Kandil, "former Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the ISB, ...listed as Director of Taibah International, designated by the US Treasury as a Global Terrorist organization." There's Yusef Abou-Allaban, current ISB director who a Fox report identified as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood. The "man who had been involved in the ISB in the 1980s" is Abdurahman Alamoudi. He founded the ISB, he's tied to Al Qaeda and supports (supported) Hamas and Hizballah. As I reported in The Silencing, "Osama Kandil...signed the “Free Abdurahman Alamoudi†petition — a petition that calls the terror-supporting Alamoudi “our community leader†— sometime in ‘03 or ‘04." And let's not forget that they have a new trustee who's on the list of unidicted co-conspirators in the Holy Land Foundation case.
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Qaradawi was banned from the US in 1999, but was still being used as a fund-raising hook for years after that. He's still a potential trustee, and the only reason he isn't a trustee now is that he doesn't officially accept such positions. I won't patronize my readers as Lampman does her's in her bowdlerized version of Qaradawi's record. Suffice to say the man's a misogynist, an anti-Semite, a homophobe (of the "should be killed" variety), a supporter of terrorism, an enemy of America and Israel as well. Here are a couple of links to his pronouncements for you.
"Some" funding? Try massive funding from Saudi Arabia. You can look around at some of the scans sprinkled throughout this post to see some examples. Saudi funding is a poison that should be shunned, and any organization that accepts it immediately renders itself suspect. Saudi Arabia is interesting in spreading its fundamentalist political Islam, not conducting ecumenical exercises. If they wanted that they could start it at home.
"Lawsuits can go on for years, and we started looking at what we could do to keep communication going," says Michael Felsen, BWC president. They held a forum at which attorneys for both sides made presentations, and then began seeking backing in the Jewish community for a public call for mediation.
Meanwhile, a group of young Jews, seeing the challenge against the ISB as "fear-mongering and Islamophobia," launched a website (www.supportthemosque.org) to encourage others in the Jewish community to support the ISB.
There's a Dhimmi born every minute. I'm sorry "a group of young Jews" calls folks (including Muslims) who are worried about the followers of Qaradawi setting up a massive base of operations in Boston "Islamophobes." And Workmen's Circle is more Leftist than Jewish, identifying themselves as secular -- but at least they didn't sign on to the amicus as the ISB wanted.
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Then the ISB trustee who had made the inflammatory statements in the Arabic press came to Boston. In mid-April, the BWC hosted a meeting at which Dr. Fitaihi apologized to Jewish community leaders. "We saw that meeting as an important event, an opportunity for leadership of both communities to come together and share views openly and honestly," says Mr. Felsen. "He made it clear he was there to heal, and other Muslim community members there said they were looking for reconciliation."
With the confluence of events, within a month the attorneys were talking, and an agreement was reached in late May to end all litigation: The defamation suit and the appeal of the suit against the land sale were both dropped.
A court allowing your lawsuit to continue is hardly a "victory," and Lampman leaves out the fact that The David Project's suit against the Boston Redevelopment Authority continues.
And Michael Felsen speaks for no one but his own group. Fitaihi's sham of an apology took place behind closed doors, to a hand-selected invitation-only audience with no press and no transcript of what he said. We all know he said what he really meant when he thought no one would find out what he had written in Arabic.
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What got the ISB to drop the suit was the fact that, if people had suspicions about the group before, it was even WORSE as they bled documents during the discovery process.
"A claim like that cuts both ways, and the David Project had documents they didn't want to come into our hands," says Albert Farrah Jr., ISB's lawyer. "They said they were going to prove my clients had links to terrorÂists. I don't think had the defendants truly thought they could have proven those claims that they would have dropped them."
Ahhh, hello? Al Farrah? Knock, knock on the head. What's that hollow sound? Is that the sound of Lampman or Farrah? No one dropped any claims. At all. Remember? The defendants (YOU were the one doing the suing) agreed to nothing and insisted they would continue to say everything they had been saying all along about your clients, as well as continuing their public records case. You know, all the stuff you were suing them for saying before you turned tail and ran? Your clients are connected to terrorists.
Oooh...wealthy Jooos. I love it. The real money here is located overseas and trades in oil.
"Our goal is to work with people who repudiate the kind of bigotry that exists in the extremist world, whether virulent anti-Semitism ... or anti-Muslim sentiments that characterize all Muslims as terrorists or sympathizers," says Alan Ronkin, deputy director of the Jewish Community Relations Council. Yet he still voices qualms about "the ISB's 'potential' relationship with Sheikh Al-Qaradawi."
Very diplomatic, Alan.
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Dr. Gordis of Hebrew College sees Boston as having the opportunity to become a model for other parts of the country, including helping Muslims move out of insularity.
"Our role in a world which is so torn and so much at risk is to encourage the moderate voices among Jews, Christians, and Muslims," he says. "Suppose there were unhappy things said by some who were leaders of that mosque. The important thing is to make the rank-and-file membership and current leadership participants in community conversations that contribute to an atmosphere of respect for 'the other.' That's not going to take place by vilification or castigation or isolation, but only by reaching out to them."
Where does critical speech enter the equation? What are the conditions for reaching out? Do Muslims want out of insularity? Great! Repudiate the Muslim Brotherhood and people like Qaradawi, shun Saudi money...there are many things they can do. I don't mind people like Gordis putting a hand out, but how can you DARE to criticize the people who are an essential part of the other side of that equation?
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"Worship services may be only 50 percent of what this mosque is for," says M. Bilal Kaleem, ISB spokesman. "The rest involves building interfaith relationships. Our biggest hope goes beyond dialogue to real cooperation on issues of shared interest."
Full circle. Interfaith with one face, politics and dawa and radicalism with the other. Appease the Gordis's in public, cavort with Mahdi Bray, Walid Fitaihi and Qaradawi when you think no one is looking.
And if it were in the hands of Jane Lampman and The Christian Science Monitor, no one would be.
Jeff Jacoby made some similar claims about the Roxbury Mosque conflict in his regular Boston Globe column.
I put together a reply that can be read on my blog at http://eaazi.blogspot.com/2007/06/open-letter-to-boston-globe-lawsuit.html .
Thursday, June 28, 2007
Open letter to the Boston Globe: A Lawsuit without Merit
Once Again Jeff Jacoby Regurgitates David Project Talking Points
Dear Editor,
If the complaint of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) against Fox, the Boston Herald, the David Project and other defendants really had no merit as Jacoby asserts in "A Lawsuit without Merit" (The Boston Globe, June 27, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/33wogs ), Justice Janet L. Sanders would not have ruled on September 25, 2006 that the ISB could continue its suit despite the defendants' motion for dismissal under the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute.
If the defendants, who were extremely well-funded and who had a much more expensive legal team than the ISB, were really so confident of victory and of their righteousness, David Project supporters could have paid for Policastro to appeal the dismissal of his lawsuit against the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and the ISB would not have withdrawn its complaint.
If Jacoby's analysis is credible, the defendants would have won, claimed all costs, broken the ISB, and stopped the construction of the Roxbury Mosque forever. The David Project and its allies would have achieved their goal as explicitly described in the discovery materials that were turned over to the ISB,
By Jacoby's logic, did the defendants not have an ethical obligation to follow such a strategy to prevent alleged "radical extremist Islam" from establishing a major foothold in Boston?
The mosque is on target for completion by Ramadan, which starts in September, and a large part of the Jewish community supports the ISB. Whatever senseless noise the Islamophobes continue to make, they lost while the ISB and the greater Boston community won.
Sincerely yours,
Joachim Martillo
Boston, MA
After several readings of this post I still found myself dumbfounded as to how the 'big picture' became so lost to the intellectual elite;the white noise created by the ISB publicity machine has, apparently, done the trick.
If the complaint of the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) against Fox, the Boston Herald, the David Project and other defendants really had no merit, Justice Janet L. Sanders would not have ruled on September 25, 2006 that the ISB could continue its suit despite the defendants' motion for dismissal under the Massachusetts anti-SLAPP statute.
If the defendants, who were extremely well-funded and who had a much more expensive legal team than the ISB, were really so confident of victory and of their righteousness, David Project supporters could have paid for Policastro to appeal the dismissal of his lawsuit against the Boston Redevelopment Authority, and the ISB would not have withdrawn its complaint.
If the David Project's Islamophobic accusations were justified, the defendants would have won, claimed all costs, broken the ISB, and stopped the construction of the Roxbury Mosque forever. The David Project and its allies would have achieved their goal as explicitly described in the discovery materials that were turned over to the ISB.
By the David Project's Islamophobic logic, did the defendants not have an ethical obligation to follow such a strategy to prevent alleged "radical extremist Islam" from establishing a major foothold in Boston?
The mosque is on target for completion by Ramadan, which starts in September, and a large part of the Jewish community supports the ISB. Whatever senseless noise the Islamophobes continue to make, they lost while the ISB and the greater Boston community won.
It is so nice that the Saudis want to build a mosque here in one of our disaffected neighborhoods.
Are they going to share with the black population of Roxbury who has suffered so much from the history of slavery in this country that the country funding this mosque, SAudi Arabia, condones slavery?
Are they going to share with the women they are prostletizing to that in Saudi women can't go outside without a male family member, can't drive, and has very little opportunity to work or make a living?
Are they going to share with the liberal jews who are supporting the ISB that Jews can't even go to Saudi because Jews are not really welcome to apply for a visa to even be a tourist there much less build a synagogue on Saudi soil? That there are separate roads in Saudi for muslims and non muslims?
Are they going to share with liberals in general that in Saudi Arabia (and by sharia law in all Muslim countries) homosexuality is a crime punishible by death? Really??? But those ISB folks seemed so NICE when they were asking me to sign their Amicus brief????
I support a mosque or many mosques in Boston. But this foreign funded foreign-led multimillion dollar mosque on the campus of RCC??? The mosque should do what most synagogues do when they want to build, raise money within the congregation, build a modest building, and grow as membership grows.
The Muslim Council of Boston, which represents Masjid al-Quran and Masjid al-Hamdi-lillah, two predominantly African American Mosques in Roxbury, started the Roxbury Mosque Project and has been intimately involved in the Project from start to finish.
If anon were really connected with the Boston Muslim community, he would know that.
Not only was the David Project engaging in its usual racist Arabophobic and Islamophobic incitement, but it was also providing the world with a clear statement of Newton-Jew animosity and racism towards the Shvartzes.
So what if wealthy Saudis with longstanding ties to Boston since their college days want to build a big mosque in Roxbury predominantly to serve the Roxbury African American Muslim community.
Real Americans are much more concerned about the efforts of fanatic racist Zionist interlopers like Haim Saban to buy US politicians like Hilary Clinton in order to subvert the American political system to the benefit of the State of Israel and to the detriment of the USA.
And here is the real issue. The subversives and traitors at the David Project need to manufacture bogus controversies to distract the general American population from the ongoing treasonous activities of the Zionist lobby and apparently innocuous Jewish communal organizations like the CJP and the JCRC.
Joachim Martillo is a front for Islamofascist jihadists who brought the Civilized World, 1993 bombing of the WTC, hijacking of 4 commercial airliners on 9/11 and the deaths of 3,000, Madrids 3/11, Londons 7/7, the recent London and Glasgow doctors terrorist attacks, the Beslan school massacre.
Joachim, did you weep for your Islamofascist Saddam Hussein too?
"NEWTON-JEW" animonsity????????? WTF????
Joachim Martillo's comments would have been more productive had they been directed at the content of Solomonia's post, rather than diverting attention from them with overly idealistic arguments regarding the workings of the court system.
Clearly, JM is too emotionally connected to this situation to comment rationally and without palpable racial hatred.
Islamofascism makes me Islamophobic.
I was brought up in Christian Science and love the religion, but have always been puzzled by the Monitor's line on Israel (and a few other things). I just don't understand.