Tuesday, January 23, 2007
The various lawsuits surrounding the Islamic Society of Boston's Mosque project are shaping up into what could be a series of test cases on how, and actually IF Americans can determine what sort of Islamic mosques -- peaceful or jihadi -- are going to be built around this country. Do we have a right to question and ask, or demand, that new religious institutions fit squarely into the American melting pot and do not threaten the long term survival of the very liberal democratic institutions that allow them here in the first place, or will we be handcuffed by a form of multiculturalism that brooks no questions and a government that takes a side?
Boston Globe: BRA seeks to block mosque questions, Urges court to halt subpoenas:
Lawyers for the city's most powerful agency argued in Suffolk Superior Court that critics of the mosque project at Roxbury Crossing had no right to depose the BRA officials about the project or obtain more documents than those already provided to the David Project, a nonprofit Jewish advocacy group.
Leaders of the David Project have questioned the BRA's deal with the Islamic Society of Boston, under which the society is building the mosque. They have also suggested the BRA is trying to keep details of the arrangement secret by blocking the release of public information.
BRA attorneys said the David Project has not agreed to pay for searching for the requested documents, including e-mails, and for copying those documents, a cost that could range from about $50,000 to $85,000.
David Project lawyers said that they have clearly stated they would pay all reasonable search and duplication costs but that the BRA had "wildly inflated" cost estimates in a continuing effort to withhold thousands of public records.
"The BRA has made a series of institutional decisions to make its public documents difficult to access," Scott P. Lewis, a lawyer representing the David Project, said at yesterday's 30-minute hearing on the BRA's motion to block his subpoenas of BRA officials and on a countermotion asking that the officials be compelled to appear for questioning...
...Lewis said the BRA has thousands of documents stored "willy-nilly" in boxes that are not labeled, a storage method he said was intended to keep the documents from being easily accessible and to increase the costs of access.
He said the questioning of the subpoenaed BRA officials will enable the David Project to understand what documents are available, and in what form, without going through massive and expensive searches of what the BRA says are more than 2,000 boxes of unindexed documents and thousands of e-mails the BRA says cannot be searched easily.
The subpoenaed BRA officials include Robert Tumposky, deputy director for management information systems; Muhammad Ali-Salaam, deputy director for special projects; Patraap Patrose, deputy director for urban design; and Kevin Morrison, the agency's general counsel.
Ali-Salaam is a central figure in the battle over the mosque because of his long association with the project and his trip to the Middle East with members of the Islamic Society leadership in 2000, during which, according to an Islamic Society publication, he helped raise funds for the project.
He also has been subpoenaed to give a deposition on Feb. 7 in a suit brought against the mosque deal by Boston resident James C. Policastro, who asserts that the arrangement between the BRA and the society violates the constitutional separation of church and state...
...IF Americans can determine what sort of Islamic mosques -- peaceful or jihadi -- are going to be built around this country. Do we have a right to question and ask, or demand, that new religious institutions fit squarely into the American melting pot and do not threaten the long term survival of the very liberal democratic institutions that allow them here in the first place...?"
?!?!? If you're asking my opinion:
1) Should the government be handing out sweetheart deals to any religious group? Absolutely not.
2) Should religious groups that dabble in extremism be suing people for pointing it out? Absolutely not.
3) Should the government be deciding what otherwise law-abiding religious institutions fit "fit squarely into the American melting pot"? Absolutely not, it's outrageous to suggest that it could or should and it detracts from the perfectly reasonable points 1 and 2 to mix them up in such a notion.
"Do we" is a question of either government or people or both together. Don't be so literal. Of course there isn't going to be a central planning board of multiculturalism or some such nonsense, but the government is going to have its part to play or the "questions" will either carry no weight or we'll never be able to know enough to ask them in the first place.
The government should certainly give higher ongoing scrutiny to new or existing mosques, and not pretend they're just the same as Catholic Churches, for instance [edit: not to mention tougher immigration rules for people coming from the places that spew the types of conspiracy theories and hatred we regular view on sites like this]. We need to be able to use government to obtain information, issue (and respond to! as in this news article) subpoenas, keep files on and consider regulations concerning the use of foreign cash and connections...that kind of thing. Some things require the involvement of the government, unless you want to release the villagers with the pitchforks to take justice into their own hands -- something no one wants.
If I was a ratepayer in Boston I would be looking to have the BRA held accountable for their actions. Who are they to be denying citizen access to review business dealings with the municipality?
I do not at all like the idea of the government making decisions on who does and who doesn't get to build a place of worship. This would rewind our society all the way back to before 1791, when the First Amendment was ratified.
Government neutrality towards religion is an important reason why Jews have thrived in the US. We should not even consider throwing away such an important bedrock concept.
Of course there isn't going to be a central planning board of multiculturalism or some such nonsense...
OK, that's why I expressed surprise! I know you're a reasonable person and your original post read (to me) more like something out of the nether regions of LGF.
That said, I still agree with Ron. Is the government going to be taking the same approach to vehemently anti-abortion churches? To the stuff at the Young Israel of Brookline that would be considered far-right if they were in Israel? Where do you think that's going to end?
Looking for an exit strategy already? We have no where to go. ;) Nothing is on the level of threat right now, or in the foreseeable future, that the threat of radical Islam is at, all the more so because once it does become established, we will, for reasons foreshadowed in your and Ron's objections, have even fewer options to fight it. It will be too late.
I would expect an extreme anti-abortion church group to get extra scrutiny by the government. It would be irresponsible of them not to due to a past propensity for violence.