When Ahmed Mansour learned that a lawsuit had been filed against him by the Islamic Society of Boston, he had one urgent question: "Will they put me in jail?"

The answer was no -- in America, people don't go to prison for publicly expressing their views, or for encouraging the government to review questionable public transactions. But Mansour had good reason to worry. He had learned the hard way that Muslim reformers who speak out against Islamist fanaticism and religious dictatorship can indeed end up in prison -- or worse. It had happened to him in his native Egypt, which he fled in 2001 after receiving death threats. He was grateful that the United States had granted him asylum, enabling him to go on promoting his vision of a progressive Islam in which human rights and democratic values would be protected. But would he now have to fight in America the same kind of persecution he experienced in Egypt?

Mansour is just one of many people and organizations being sued for defamation by the Islamic Society of Boston, which accuses them all of conspiring to deny freedom of worship to Boston-area Muslims. In fact, the defendants -- who include journalists, a terrorism expert, and the founder of the American Anti-Slavery Group, plus the Episcopalian lay minister and the Jewish attorney who together with Mansour formed the interfaith Citizens for Peace and Tolerance in 2004 -- appear to be guilty of nothing more than voicing concerns about the ISB's construction of a large mosque in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury.

More than a few unsettling questions have been raised about the ISB and its mosque project. For example...