Thursday, January 5, 2006
In this week's Boston Jewish Advocate newspaper, there is a story describing the fact that Combined Jewish Philanthropies and Boston's Jewish Community Relations Council are standing with the David Project in the Islamic Society of Boston's lawsuit. They have taken out a full-page advertisement in the same issue, likely in response to the ISB's add in a previous issue, basically stating that while they are both in favor of fighting for religious pluralism, lawsuits do not help.
This is welcome news, as the stance of both, left-leaning, groups was something of an open question.
Here is the portion of the article that the Advocate makes available online:
Ad war launched over ISB lawsuit
In an acknowledgment that a lawsuit filed by the Islamic Society of Boston has escalated tensions between Boston’s Muslim and Jewish communities, Combined Jewish Philanthropies and the Jewish Community Relations Council issued a joint statement this week in solidarity with the David Project, one of the groups named in the suit.
The statement, published in a full-page advertisement in this week’s Advocate, insists that the ability to raise concerns and answer questions must be respected “if we are to live together and sustain a healthy, diverse community.”
The statement comes two weeks after the ISB took out an ad in the Advocate defending its lawsuit against the David Project and other groups and individuals it claims conspired against it. The ISB’s ad appeals for members of the Boston community “not to buy into the poisoned rhetoric and attacks against our community undertaken by a few extremists who would divide us.”
The ISB named the David Project and the group Citizens for Peace and Tolerance in a lawsuit filed earlier in the year against the Fox 25 News and the Boston Herald. The suit charges the parties, which have both actively raised concerns about the ties between ISB officials and Islamic extremist groups, with defamation and conspiring to undermine the ISB’s $24 million mosque project in Roxbury.
Patty Jacobson, vice president of marketing and communications at CJP, said: “We wanted to run an ad now because we felt it was important to acknowledge the tension in the community. The Jewish community has a strong commitment to interfaith dialogue and collaboration.”...
