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Days after a lawsuit was dropped that allowed construction to continue on a $22 million mosque and cultural center in New England the Islamic Society of Boston held a day long celebration to commemorate the completion of a minaret with a 5000 pound cap. I’ll let the picture and caption in the Boston Globe speak for itself before I discuss the history of the center.

The AP version of the photo is a bit more descriptive. I have to wonder about the way the media covers these pictures with such a celebratory tone. It’s not as if there isn’t controversy surrounding the mosque. In fact there has been nothing but controversy surrounding the mosque with critics uncovering links to radical Islam and a sweetheart land deal that allowed the Islamic Society of Boston to purchase the land from the city for $175,000 even though the 45,000-square-foot parcel was assessed at $401,000.

But the sweetheart land deal was only the beginning of problems surrounding the deal. It was quickly learned that the Islamic Society of Boston was alleged to have ties to terrorists as evidenced by Daniel Pipes in 2003.

At the groundbreaking in November 2002, local politicians hailed the planned construction of an Islamic Center by the Islamic Society of Boston as a bridge between Islam and Boston’s other religions, the Boston Herald recounted yesterday in the first of a major two-part investigative series. Mayor Thomas M. Menino hailed the center for “creating a space for inter-faith dialog,” and thereby bringing “both the Muslim community and the community at large closer together.” U.S. Rep. Michael Capuano (Democrat) predicted the center would “help to create a dialogue between Muslims and non-Muslims so we may learn more about each others’ traditions.” The Boston Redevelopment Authority, a public agency, was no less enthusiastic about the project and sold a 1.9-acre lot to the Islamic Society of Boston for $175,000, or well under the property’s market value.

All this looks pretty dumb a year later, with revelations in the Herald yesterday that the Islamic Society of Boston is closely associated with:

* Yusuf Abdullah al-Qaradawi, the Egyptian Islamist whose outspoken backing for Hamas led the Department of State to bar him from entering the United States in 1999; and
* Abdurahman Alamoudi, the American Islamist recently arrested on terrorism-related charges (on him, see “United States of America v. Abdurahman Muhammad Alamoudi”) who in the past has publicly supported Hamas, Hizbullah, and other terrorist organizations.

Then today’s Herald casts an intense look at:

* Osama M. Kandil, the Islamic Society of Boston’s leader for over a decade. Turns out that in addition being a former instructor at Harvard Medical School and the founder and chairman of an Egyptian pharmaceutical company, Biopharm Group, he is also associated with the notorious Safa group of Saudi businesses and “charities” headquartered outside Washington, D.C. and was a founding director of the Muslim Arab Youth Association, one of the most radical Islamist organizations in the United States.

Menino and Capuano responded today to the initial revelations, Menino by blowing off the charges (”The Islamic community I know is a good community. Two individuals do not make up a whole community”) and Capuano by calling the allegations “pretty serious” and promising “to do my best to learn more.” (src The Islamic Society of Boston & the Politicians’ Red Faces)

The Boston Herald inquiry resulted in lawsuits being filed by the Islamic Society of Boston in an attempt to squelch discussion about the ties to radical Islamists. On June 5th the lawsuit against the media was dropped without a dime of restitution being payed.

The decision last week by the Islamic Society of Boston to drop its lawsuit against 17 defendants, including counterterrorism specialist Steven Emerson, gives reason to step back to consider radical Islam’s legal ambitions.

The envisioned $22 million Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.

The lawsuit came about because, soon after ground was broken in November 2002 for the ISB’s $22 million Islamic center, the media and several non-profits began asking questions about three main topics: why the ISB paid the city of Boston less than half the appraised value of the land it acquired; why a city of Boston employee, who is also an ISB board member, fund raised on the Boston taxpayer’s tab for the center while traveling in the Middle East; and the ISB’s connections to radical Islam.

Under this barrage of criticism, the ISB in May 2005 turned tables on its critics with a lawsuit accusing them of defamation and conspiring to violate its civil rights through “a concerted, well-coordinated effort to deprive the Plaintiffs … of their basic rights of free association and the free exercise of religion.”

The lawsuit roiled Bostonians for two long years, and Jewish-Muslim relations in particular. The discovery process, while revealing that the defendants had engaged in routine newsgathering and political disputation, and had nothing to hide, uncovered the plaintiff’s record of extremism and deception. Newly aware of its own vulnerabilities, the ISB on May 29 withdrew its lawsuit with its many complaints about “false statements,” and it did so without getting a dime.

Why should this dispute matter to anyone beyond the litigants?

The Islamist movement has two wings, one violent and one lawful, which operate apart but often reinforce each other. Their effective coordination was on display in Britain last August, when the Islamist establishment seized on the Heathrow airport plot to destroy planes over the Atlantic Ocean as an opening for it to press the Blair government for changes in policy.

A similar one-two punch stifles the open discussion of Muhammad, the Koran, Islam, and Muslims. Violence causing hundreds of deaths erupted against The Satanic Verses, the Danish cartoons, and Pope Benedict, creating a climate of fear that adds muscle to lawsuits such as the ISB’s. As Mr. Emerson noted when the Muslim Public Affairs Council recently threatened to sue him for supposed false statements, “Legal action has become a mainstay of radical Islamist organizations seeking to intimidate and silence their critics.”

I haven’t heard any statement claiming that the upside down flag was a mistake. I do know that many captured the image on their cell phones to send back home for all to enjoy. As for the city of Boston it figures; you get who you elect and in this case they elected a mayor who decided that little research and a sweetheart land deal was best for all involved. Perhaps Bostonians might want to research their candidates a little better.

Trackposted to Pirate’s Cove, Perri Nelson’s Website, The Amboy Times, DeMediacratic Nation, Right Truth, Maggie’s Notebook, stikNstein… has no mercy, Pursuing Holiness, and Right Voices, thanks to Linkfest Haven Deluxe.

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