Friday, July 14, 2006
Bad news for the Boston Mosque project:
The Jewish Advocate: Judge widens review of city mosque deal by Ted Siefer
The case against the City of Boston and a Muslim group over a controversial mosque project in Roxbury could get stronger, after a judge admitted new documents raising questions about the city’s conduct in the deal.
“This is a significant step forward,” said Evan Slavitt, the lawyer representing James Policastro, the Mission Hill resident who originally filed a lawsuit against the city and the Islamic Society of Boston in October 2004. The suit charges that the city’s sale of public land at a significant discount for the construction of a mosque in exchange for a package of benefits, including an Islamic lecture series, violated the separation of church and state...
...In issuing her decision late last month, Judge Regina Quinlan rejected the Boston Redevelopment Authority’s claim that only materials it submitted as part of an administrative record of the deal could be reviewed. Policastro’s claims, the judge wrote, were of “constitutional dimension” and other documents that have recently come to light could be used to support the case.
Among the documents the BRA did not include in its administrative record was an opinion from the BRA’s legal counsel in the early stages of the project warning that discounting the sale price of the land for a religious group could pose constitutional problems. An Ethics Commission opinion also noted that the close involvement of a Muslim BRA official, Muhammad Ali Salaam, could create the appearance that decisions were “unduly influenced by personal loyalties.”
Other documents indicate that Ali Salaam was intimately involved in many aspects of the deal, traveling to the Middle East on a fund-raising trip with ISB officials and writing letters on behalf of the ISB on BRA stationary.
Slavitt said that he now plans to file a motion that would compel BRA and ISB officials to provide testimony. So far they have refused to comply.
Citing the litigation, BRA officials also refused to participate in a public hearing on the deal called by a Boston city councilor in May.
Slavitt said that it’s too early to say what the outcome of the lawsuit will be but, he said, it could ultimately invalidate the transaction, meaning that the ISB would “have to tear down the establishment.”...
Ouch.
Yikes stripes! Yowza, yowza, yowza! Holy Toledo!
Hard to believe that the City would really make them tear down the mosquue, but I'd like to see the ISB pay market value for the land, skip the dawah lecture series and dawah library, and have a completely transparent organization that repudiates radicalism in all forms. I don't care if Sheik Quaradawi or Salah Soltan are considered moderates in the Middle East. They're not moderates by American standards, and it's unacceptable to promote these people and their beliefs in Boston.
The city has put everyone at risk should the mosque come down. it could spark violence on the part of the humiliated muslims offended by notions of a liberal democracy telling them to bring the building down.