For over five years, we have been trying to break the silence surrounding the controversial Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center run by Boston’s Muslim American Society (MAS) – a group that federal prosecutors call “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”
Boston’s mainstream media have been – in the cases of the Herald and Fox 25 – cowed into silence by the threat of legal action. They have ceased reporting what they know. In the case of the Globe, which first paid for and then buried an investigative report on the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) mosque, the paper’s politically correct mindset prevents it from reporting the facts as they know them to be.
A few weeks ago, we were able to force open a discussion about the Islamic center within the Jewish community, whose leaders, not unlike the media, had chosen not to reveal what they knew about the
threats posed by the ISB/MAS. The catalyst was a column in Boston’s Jewish Advocate criticizing Newton Rabbi Eric Gurvis for his public embrace of the Muslim American Society leadership. Ironically, his embrace came soon after one of the Muslim American Society’s imams was caught on tape telling followers to “pick up the gun and the sword, don’t be afraid to go out into the world and do your job.”
In this section of our website, we document the resultant debate within the New England Jewish community – on how to talk about radical islam in our midst and how to talk to each other about such a controversial topic. Here we list the key articles and documents which have driven the controversy. For an extensive chronological account of the debate, follow the link to see the "Controversy Timeline."
Summary of Events
On May 22nd, 2010, despite warnings from the Boston Jewish leadership about the extremist background of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick visited the Islamic center and publicly embraced the extremist Imam Abdullah Faaruuq. Shortly after Patrick's visit to the Islamic center, independent candidate for Massachusetts governor Tim Cahill criticized Patrick for pandering to Islamic extremists. During a press conference held by MAS to condemn Cahill's statements, Newton Rabbi Eric Gurvis embraced the head of the MAS, Bilal Kaleem, for which he was criticized by APT President Charles Jacobs in a Jewish Advocate article. Upset at Dr. Jacobs, 70 Massachusetts rabbis issued a letter of collective condemnation, accusing him of "waging a destructive campaign against Boston' Muslim community." The rabbis' letter resulted in a massive outpouring of support for Charles Jacobs and Americans for Peace and Tolerance, as well as of condemnation of the rabbis - with Christians, Muslims, and Jews speaking out for APT and against the rabbis' false statements. After the jump is a timeline documenting the controversy.
Americans for Peace and Tolerance said today that Governor Patrick's controversial visit to the Saudi-funded mega-mosque in Boston was sponsored by Islamic Relief, a group with longstanding terrorist connections and close ties to the Gaza Flotilla.
On May 29th, APT released a video of the Governor's May 22 visit to the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury. The video showed Patrick embracing Imam Abdullah Faarooq, who tells his followers to "pick up the gun and the sword." Faarooq is a supporter of local terror suspects Aafia Siddiqui and Tarek Mehanna.
At the mosque, Faarooq gave staffers from Attorney General Martha Coakley's office a $50K check to "train" Mass police in "sensitivity."
Flyers distributed at the event revealed that the Governor's visit was primarily sponsored by Islamic Relief. Islamic Relief is the founding member of the Union of Good (UOG), an umbrella of Hamas-funding charities. UOG is a designated by federal authorities as a terrorist entity, and is headed by Yusuf al Qaradawi, the spiritual head of the Muslim Brotherhood which gave birth to Hamas and Al Queda.
Qaradawi was also an original Trustee of the Roxbury mosque.
The Gaza Flotilla Link: The violent Turkish activists aboard the "Mavi Marmara" who attacked and attempted to lynch Israeli Navy commandos in Monday's Gaza flotilla incident also belonged to a Union of Good member organization – the IHH, which is directly linked to Hamas fundraising.
Charles Jacobs, President of APT said, "Governor Patrick could have known that his visit to the mosque was being sponsored by an allegedly Hamas-supporting charity. Activists from APT personally handed the Governor a memo on Islamic Relief in January of 2009."
Jacobs indicated his concern that the $50K check might have come directly from Islamic Relief, which the Israeli government accuses of sponsoring Hamas. "It is incumbent on the Governor to immediately return the funds and investigate the source of this tainted money" said Jacobs.
He also repeated APT's request to the Governor: "Stop embracing radicals, reach out to truly moderate Muslims, and please don't let political correctness compromise our security."
Americans for Peace and Tolerance Issues Video Criticizing Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick’s Embrace of Islamic Radicals
YouTube video shows Governor Patrick embracing the radical leadership of the Muslim American Society (MAS), including an Imam who who told followers they must “pick up the gun and the sword” in the context of the arrests of local Islamic extremist Aafia Siddiqui and terror suspect Tarek Mehanna.
Boston, MA, May 27, 2010 -- The Muslim Brotherhood is the source of most of Jihad ideology and related terror throughout the world today. Yet Massachusetts Governor Deval Patrick is embracing the MAS: a Muslim organization that Federal prosecutors have called “the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Today, Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT), an organization of Christians, Jews and Islamic reformers, released a 7 minute video showing the close relationship of the Governor to these radicals.
Dr. Charles Jacobs, APT president, said the video highlights Governor Patrick’s visit last Saturday to the Muslim American Society’s (MAS) controversial Saudi-funded Roxbury mega-mosque and cultural center.
Jacobs said, “The Governor’s embrace of Imam Faarooq is especially egregious, given that the Imam recently urged congregants to “pick up the sword and the gun” in the context of supporting recently arrested local Muslims on terror-related charges.
“And it is especially troubling that the office of the MA Attorney General Martha Coakley,” Dr. Jacobs continued, “accepted a $50K grant from Imam Faarooq and the MAS to fund the training of Massachusetts law enforcement agencies, training which will likely be conceived and conducted by radicals.” The Governor also agreed to comply with a list of “commitments” that MAS leaders requested of him. “These requests,” said Jacobs, “which seek to privilege the Muslim community, may open the way for Sharia finance in Massachusetts, and may also encourage the dissemination of radical Islamic propaganda in state agencies and the public schools.”
“We can not let false accusations of racism and Islamophobia intimidate our leadership into failing to secure our community,” Jacobs said, “We are puzzled as to why the Governor embraces the radicals and their agenda instead of reaching out to truly moderate Muslim leaders in the Boston area.”
Governor Patrick please consider the concerns of all the citizens of the Commonwealth and:
1. Stop embracing radicals
2. Give back the questionable money
3. Reach out to truly moderate Muslims
4. Don't let political correctness compromise our security
This article was written by Charles Jacobs and Ilya Feoktistov, President and Research Director of Americans for Peace and Tolerance. It originally appeared in the Boston Jewish Advocate on February 11, 2010.
Just last week we saw a Newsweek article describing a national "twinning project" that had brought together 100 American synagogues and mosques for interfaith programming. The writer was Rabbi Marc Schneier, whose Foundation for Ethnic Understanding runs the program.
As a prime example of his success, Rabbi Schneier presented the twinning program in Buffalo, N.Y. As it turns out, we have been working for months with community members there who fear that Jews are being deceived by Islamic radicals posing as "moderates." Unfortunately, our research shows that some Jewish leaders in Buffalo seem to have acted naively, substituting wishful thinking for fact-based judgment.
The Buffalo twinning was conceived and coordinated by doctors Robert Stall and Othman Shibly - a Jewish geriatrician and a Muslim dentist who had together attended a medical conference in Damascus, Syria. At a mosque there, Shibly introduced Stall to a Syrian cleric, Sheikh Rajab Deeb, who is a top disciple of the dentist's own spiritual mentor, the recently deceased Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro.
Stall promoted Shibly and his Syrian spiritual leaders to Buffalo Jews as moderate and peaceloving men of faith. Writing to a community member, Stall said, "Dr. Shibly's efforts to improve the world are ... to a large extent based on the teachings of Sheikh Ahmad Kuftaro, a Syrian imam who was in many ways ahead of his time."
Buffalo's Jewish twinners must have been persuaded: They invited Sheikh Deeb to address the interfaith participants through an interpreter - via the Internet phone service Skype.
Unfortunately, nobody in Jewish leadership seems to have performed due diligence: While Sheikh Kuftaro's English-language Web sites are full of clichés about interfaith spirituality, the Arab-language sections reek with Jew-hatred.
Some research findings, based on a 30- minute Web search:
On Kuftaro's own Web site, one finds: Jews are "the killers of prophets"; "Israel is a dagger in the heart of the Muslim nation"; "All Muslims are obligated to do jihad upon the Zionists."
A video on his site shows Kuftaro turning over his pulpit to Louis Farrakhan, visiting his mosque as an honored guest; another shows him giving the same honor to the neo-Nazi preacher William Baker.
On Sheikh Deeb's site: Alongside the sermon he presented to the Buffalo twinning event is a 2005 sermon: "Jerusalem is Ours," where he preaches that Jews "want to remove and destroy every trace except for their footsteps and pollute every creed except their faith, and eradicate every race except their race, and they claim to be G-d's Chosen People ...."
None of this is surprising: Deeb and Kuftaro have served as top clerics in Syria's dictator Bashar Assad's totalitarian government, known for spreading virulent Jew-hatred.
Closer to home, Shibly's son Hassan and his wife, Sawsan Tabbaa, were detained at the US-Canadian border after returning from an Islamic conference in Toronto, about which the Department of Homeland Security said: "... we had credible intelligence that conferences similar to the one from which these individuals were leaving were being used by terrorist organizations to fundraise and to hide the travel of terrorists themselves."
Finding this information was not all that hard. So, then, how is it possible that the Jews taking part in Buffalo interfaith efforts were so easily bamboozled? Our answer: Many liberal Jewish communities are so blinded by their strong desire for peaceful coexistence that they succumb to multicultural fantasy: "It just can't be true that Islamic radicals would try to take advantage of our good will. Surely once they see our goodness and noble intentions, they will reciprocate. Only a racist Islamophobe would think otherwise." We used to think about radical Islamists getting a "key to the city" as the prize for deceiving its Jews - what other group, after all, would suspect them if the Jews gave them a pass? We identified this as among the most serious consequences of naive Jewish leaders being taken in by radicals posing as moderates. But in Buffalo we have seen another consequence: Once "dialogue" is established, radical Islamists can pressure Jewish communities not to defend Israel.
In Buffalo, Shibly denounced a Hillel-sponsored speech by Israeli General Effie Eitam at the University of Buffalo, and hinted strongly that the twinning project was being put in jeopardy. Writing to the event organizers, Dr. Shibly said: "It is so sad as we are trying to bring our communities together and make a historical step to join the national efforts of twinning mosques and synagogues projects for common good, we get a slap in our face."
Shibly was writing in support of the Western New York Peace Center, a group dominated by vicious anti-Israel sentiment. Evidently, then, Jews in Buffalo threaten to disrupt inter-communal peace by bringing a decorated (though admittedly controversial) Israeli war hero. Jewish leadership has a duty to act responsibly and rationally in protecting the community. A leadership that relies on wishful thinking instead of facts is a failed leadership. A twinning program may be a worthy effort, but only if it partners with truly moderate Muslims.
Charles Jacobs and Ilya Feoktistov are president and research director, respectively, of Americans for Peace and Tolerance.
Rabbi Marc Schneier is a leading exponent of Jewish-Muslim dialogue. As founder of the Foundation for Ethnic Understanding, he recently described in Newsweek the successes of his second annual “Weekend of Twinning of Synagogues and Mosques.” This interfaith initiative brings together “100 synagogues and 100 mosques” for a weekend of interfaith programming. Unfortunately for the Rabbi, he used, as a local example of mosque-synagogue twinning the case in Buffalo, NY – a case which shows just how easily Jews can be deceived by radical Muslims posing as “moderates.”
“…Coming just days after the horror of extremist violence at Fort Hood ,” wrote Rabbi Schneier, “the Weekend of Twinning was heartening evidence that most Muslims are moderates, and that majorities in both the Muslim and Jewish communities seek better relations…”
It may well be true that most American Muslims are moderate, but the Jews in Buffalo seem to have got themselves snookered.
(This article was written by Americans for Peace and Tolerance President Dr. Charles Jacobs and was originally published in the Jewish Advocate on December 31, 2009.)
We are a small people. We have multiple and powerful external enemies. Striving for Jewish political unity is our natural and rational impulse. Criticizing other Jewish leaders and mainstream Jewish organizations is usually just not done.
But these are extraordinary times. We face daunting challenges for which there are no known answers. Chief among them are Islamic anti-Semitism and the global jihad that pose enormous, unanticipated threats to Jews around the world.
In my last column I criticized the Anti-Defamation League and its head, Abraham Foxman, for its inadequate response to these threats. In truth, it is not only the ADL that is failing: Few Jewish leaders and almost no mainstream organizations have alerted our community that we face a radically new and potentially existential threat profile.
On November 12th, Americans for Peace and Tolerance Research Director Ilya Feoktistov attended the bail hearing for Tarek Mehanna, the Sudbury man accused, among other charges, of plotting to massacre shoppers at an area mall in an act of Islamic terrorism. At the courthouse, he joined a crowd of about 30 Mehanna supporters who had organized a rally via the internet.
Unequivocal support for Mehanna in spite of the serious crimes he is accused of committing is scarce within the Boston Muslim community. Yet Mehanna’s supporters have largely gotten away with representing themselves as the true voice of Boston’s Muslims. The media has helped to enable this narrative, with most coverage of the hearing generically labeling Mehanna’s supporters as “Boston Muslims.”
However, the major Boston media sources - the Boston Globe, the Boston Herald, and the NECN had interviewed Feoktistov for a counterpoint to Mehanna's supporters.
Two weeks ago, a Sudbury resident, Tarek Mehanna was arrested on terrorism charges. According to the FBI, he and his friends had sought terrorist training in places like Pakistan and plotted to machine gun random shoppers at a local shopping mall.
The images the headlines provoke (blood, panic, screams at a mall near you) bring to mind scenes from last year’s Mumbai Massacres in India where young men, trained and sent by the Pakistani Lashkar-e-Taibah terror group, gunned down innocents with automatic weapons in public places.
Could there possibly be a connection between an arrest in Sudbury, Massachusetts and the massacre in Mumbai, India?
What is most appalling about the media's coverage of the Fort Hood mass-murder attacks is the speculation, clung to by the likes of Time Magazine and CNN, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding, that this might have been a case of "infectious" post-traumatic stress disorder Nidal Hassan "caught" from the soldiers he had treated as an Army psychiatrist. Besides being based on some rather creative pseudo-medical rationalization, this media theory is effectively a calumny: Afraid of inflaming public sentiment against radical Islamists, those who've been peddling the "vicarious PTSD" explanation for Hassan's actions are basically telling the public that it should instead focus mistrust and suspicion on our own soldiers and the medical professionals who care for them.
That Islamic radical who's been praising suicide bombings and cursing the United States? - Harmless misunderstood romantic. Your Iraq veteran neighbor and the nurse who treated his wounds? - Potential mass murderers. Disgusting.
By Americans for Peace and Tolerance Director Dennis Hale
Once again, an act of “sudden, unexplained” violence by an American Muslim has generated furrowed brows, chin-pulling, and puzzled looks in the press and, more alarmingly, in the law enforcement community. The killings at Ft. Hood by Major Nidal Malik Hasan have all the earmarks of a jihad long in the gestation, grounded in orthodox Islamic theology and the lunatic fantasies of political Islam. And if his former colleague, retired Army Col. Terry Lee is correct, the signs have been there for many years. They could be seen in Major Hasan’s insistence that Muslims have a right to “rise up” against the U. S. military because the war on terror is a “war against Islam”; in his claim to be a “Palestinian” rather than an American, and a “Muslim first, and an American second”; and in the very particular reason for his reluctance to be deployed overseas. We have it on the authority of the Major’s cousin that Hasan was “mortified” at the thought of being deployed to Afghanistan: not “afraid,” notice, as any rational person would be (although as a psychologist Major Hasan would not have been thrown into combat), but “mortified.” And it should have been obvious why: if the war against the Taliban and al-Qaeda is really a war against Islam, then no devout Muslim could possibly take part in it, and every Muslim would have a religious obligation to “rise up against the military”.
