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July 21, 2006

US: Boston Islamic Society Can Proceed With Its Legal Vendetta

The Boston Globe reports that yesterday, a Superior Court judge ruled that the Islamic Society of Boston can go ahead with its legal suit, which claims that various groups "defamed" it.

The sixteen groups and individuals named in the suit include the Boston Herald, Fox Channel 25, The Jewish rights group The David Project and Citizens for Peace and Tolerance. The latter group is an alliance of Jewish, Christian and Muslim citizens opposed to religious bigotry.

The defamation suit alleges that the above-named groups, and others, by highlighting known links of the group's associates with terrorists, as printed in the Boston Herald and stated on Fox TV in 2004, attempted to halt the construction of the Roxbury Mosque.

As we wrote on January 2, the lawsuit was first filed in May 2005 and contains some defamation of its own. It calls Steve Emerson of Fox TV a "widely discredited and self professed 'expert' on radical Islam and Islamic terrorism," and says that "Emerson's research and findings have been routinely, publicly and severely criticized as both uninformed and biased against Muslims."

The fact that his findings have been criticized does not make them untrue. The links between the Boston Islamic Society and terrorism are true. One of the eight founders of the Boston Islamic Society is Abdurahman Alamoudi, currently serving a 23-year prison term for being involved in an assassination plot. He was an outspoken supporter of terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah, and has been identified by the US Treasury Department as a fund-raiser for al-Qaeda.

In March, 2004, Dr Walid Fitaihi, one of the founders of the group was reported to have written in an Arabic newspaper that Jews were the "murderers of Prophets" and other anti-semitic comments, such as Jews would be punished for their "oppression, murder, and rape of the worshipers of Allah" by the Boston Herald. Fitaihi was a trustee and treasurer of IBS, as we reported on January 2.

The individuals named in the suit had argued that under a 1994 law, designed to protect private citizens who brought legal cases against developers, that the defamation suit should be dismissed.

However, Judge Janet L. Sanders ruled yesterday that this statute does not affect the individuals in the defamation suit.

Howard Cooper, the attorney for the Islamic Society of Boston, said: "For many months since my clients simply sought to file a lawsuit and redress their rights in court, all we heard was that we were attempting to intimidate people and we would end up having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in attorneys' fees. The court has now rejected the defendants' arguments in their entirety and ruled that the ISB filed its lawsuit appropriately."

Jeff Robbins, attorney for some of the "nonmedia" defendants said the ruling would be appealed but was not a setback. He said his clients were eager to present their responses to the defamation suit in court. He said: "There is a very strong desire on the part of those who have been sued to lay out the evidence about the ISB on the public record. They think this is a very important public service, to lay out who provided the funds to the ISB, to whom the ISB has made contributions."

Howard Cooper called on those named in the suit to enter mediation on their dispute, and if they did so, the society would drop the suit.

There is something very unhealthy about this whole case. It impinges on freedom of speech, and the ability of citizens and media to highlight the negative associations of a group which, by planning a project as ambitious as the Roxbury Mosque, will influence many people.

The land upon which the mosque is currently being constructed was worth more than $400,000. It was sold to the group for $175,000 by the Boston Redevelopment Authority. James Policastro is currently mounting a case against the city of Boston and the Boston Redevelopment Authority for violating the mandatory separation of church and state

On Tuesday November 1, the David Project released a statement, containing the following: "The ISB lawsuit is an ugly and obvious attempt to bully American citizens into not exercising their fundamental First Amendment rights: the right to engage in free speech, the right to express views to governmental bodies about important public policy issues, and the right to communicate with other citizens."

On Thursday, 5 January, Boston's Jewish Advocate newspaper carried a full page advertisement, in which ISB was accused of using litigation to suppress discussion, and also of failing to adequately respond to Jewish leaders' questions. Jewish leaders have, since London's 7/7, where mosques have been cited as sources of extremism, been concerned about mosques with possible terror links.

There are an estimated 240,000 Jews in Boston, and 70,000 Muslims. The American Jewish Committe's branch in Boston is headed by Larry Lowenthal, who said in January of the leading figures in ISB: "There is a great deal of anxiety.... The distance that I think has to be established between these current leaders and their colleagues who have made troubling statements ... that distance has to be clearly distinct and established."

We noted on January 7 that CAIR had entered the controversy. Arsalan Iftikhar, the legal director of the Council of American Islamic Relations, attempted to blame "Islamophobia" for the hostility to the IBS and its proposed mosque, which, when finished, will be the largest Muslim religious building in the northeastern US. It will have a 125-foot minaret and a 75-foot dome.

Iftikhar said: "Unfortunately, I see the Boston case as indicative of a growing trend in anti-Muslim rhetoric that has grown after 9/11. It has especially impacted local Muslim communities in terms of building their mosques. High concentrations of Muslim populations are being given a hard time for just trying to practice their faith."

Maybe if he looked at how the ISB placed a response to Dr. Walid Fitaihi's anti-semitic statements on its website, in which ISB refuses to actively condemn the comments, then perhaps he would understand the anxiety of a Jewish community when confronted by a Mosque run by such individuals.

But CAIR, like Boston Islamic Society, also had members who were accused of terrorism, so invoking Islamophobia is an easy distraction from the truth. One of CAIR's original funders was the Holy Land Foundation, which is a Specially Designated Global Terrorist Organization. Randall Todd "Ismail" Royer was CAIR's "Communications Specialist". He was also "Civil Rights Coordinator." He was indicted on charges of conspiring to help Al Qaida and the Taliban to battle American troops in Afghanistan. On January 16, 2004, he pleaded guilty to lesser offenses and was convicted of weapons and explosives charges in connection to a terrorist related offense. Royer also supplied funds to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

One of the former trustees of the ISB is Yusef al-Qaradawi, who has praised suicide bombers in Israel and advocated killing homosexuals. He has given his blessings to the killing of US soldiers in Iraq, and was asked to attend an ISB fundraiser event in 2002 (he is barred from the US, so he appeared via video-link).

The group Citizens For Peace And Tolerance wrote on their website on November 5, 2005: "The ISB's lawsuit is directed at honest citizens who have raised legitimate questions about the people responsible for building the largest mosque and Islamic center in the Northeast, on land partially subsidized by the citizens of Boston. The lawsuit seeks to punish and intimidate those citizens – and by extension, to warn others, in Boston and elsewhere, not to raise questions about any Muslim organization, no matter how much evidence exists to justify those questions.

This is an obvious and ugly attempt at bullying American citizens into giving up their rights as citizens: the right to engage in free speech and inquiry, the right to question government policies, the right to engage in political activity with like-minded citizens. By forcing us to spend our money and time, the ISB hopes they will make us give up our quest for the truth.."

It is interesting that Howard Cooper has suggested that if those mentioned in the defamation suit would agree to mediation, then the case would be dropped. Maybe there are issues of money at stake. Or maybe there is a fear that when exposed in a court, the ISB will find itself receiving a lot of negative press publicity.

Oscar WIlde embarked on a defamation suit in the 19th century. Wilde ended up in Reading Jail, serving two years' hard labor.

Posted by Giraldus Cambrensis at July 21, 2006 10:03 PM

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