RELIGION

Boston Mosque: the Rise of Radical Islam?

By Dale Hurd
CBN News Sr. Reporter

CBN.com – BOSTON, Massachusetts - A mosque is rising in the heart of Boston. Not just any mosque, but the largest mosque in the northeastern United States.

At a cost of $22 million, the 60,000-square-foot Islamic Cultural Center will be a prominent symbol of the growth of Islam in America. But the project is under fire, as some say it will also be a symbol of radical Islam.

The Islamic Society of Boston is under scrutiny for ties to radicalism. But the society says it does not tolerate extremism. And yet, some former and present leaders of the society have been tied to extremism.

The connections go right to the foundation of this mosque and the Islamic Society of Boston, or ISB.

The very founder of the Islamic society, Abdurahman Alamoudi, is sitting in federal prison after pleading guilty to charges related to a bizarre plot by Moammar Ghadafi to assassinate Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. But the society insists it hasn't had a relationship with its founder for several years.

Dr. Yusef al-Qaradawi used to be listed as one of the society’s four directors, on IRS forms.
The ISB says Qaradawi is a respected Muslim scholar, but the Egyptian Wahabbi cleric has urged Iraqi Muslims to kill American soldiers, and has praised Palestinian suicide bombers.

He was almost banned from entering Britain this summer. On July 7, 2004, he was publicly condemned by Prime Minister Tony Blair, who said, "Let me make it absolutely clear. We want nothing to do with people who support suicide bombers in Palestine or elsewhere, or support terrorism.”

In 1995, Qaradawi told his followers, "We will conquer Europe, we will conquer America!" The society says listing Qaradawi as a director was an “administrative oversight'' which, it says, “was subsequently corrected.''

Dennis Hale, a Boston College professor, said, "This is a smokescreen. This is deception."

Hale heads Citizens for Peace and Tolerance, a group that wants the Islamic Society of Boston to come clean about its ties to radical Islam.

Hale remarked, "This is a mosque that combines Wahabbi theology, Muslim Brotherhood politics and lots of money, and that's a very dangerous combination. Everywhere in the world where that's been found, bad things happened."

Osama Kandil, a trustee of the society, has been linked by the government to the directorship of Taibah International Aid Association, a group that some federal officials suspect supports terrorists. The ISB says Taibah is an Islamic charitable organization.

Terrorism expert Stephen Scwartz has a different view. He said, “Taibah was a scheme that was used to swindle people to get them to believe they were helping Bosnians, when, in fact, Taibah exploited Bosnians and Bosnia in order to advance the terrorist agenda in Europe. Taibah was shut down by the Bosnian government right after 9-11, and I don't accept in any way, any description of Taibah as anything else but part of the terrorist network.”

Kandil has also been identified in a federal government affidavit as a member of the "Safa Group," a complicated array of individuals and interlocking for-profit and non-profit entities allegedly involved in financing Islamic terrorism.

Schwartz said, “The SAFA group is much worse than Taibah in my view. Now, the SAFA group is a group that operates in the United States. And the SAFA group is essentially a financial cover for groups connected to Wahabbism in Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood. SAFA was essentially a financial conspiracy to support extremist activity all over the world.”

An affidavit unsealed in federal court in Virginia last year said financial activity by the Safa Group "evidences a conspiracy. . .to route money through hidden paths to terrorists and to defraud the United States."

Walid Fitaihi, another leader of the society, wrote in an article for an Arabic-language newspaper that Jews are the "the murderers of prophets." According to one translation, he also accused Jews of the "oppression, murder, and rape of the worshipers of Allah. They have perpetrated the worst of evils, and they have brought the worst corruption to the earth..."

The ISB says Fitaihi's comments were ``not meant to incite hatred of an entire faith or people.''

Hale said, “The new so-called new leaders of the Mosque have continued to deny that Fitaihi is an anti-Semite and he's still on the board of trustees. They said they would fire him. They said they had fired him, but they didn't.”

The bulk of the money for the new mosque has come from private individuals in Saudi Arabia. That is another red flag, according to terror experts. So you might think that at this point, the City of Boston would get involved.

But the mayor's office, as well as The Boston Globe newspaper, have brushed off concern over the mosque. In fact, the Boston Redevelopment Authority under Mayor Thomas Menino sold the ISB the land for the mosque for a song; one half or one quarter of its true value.

Real Estate developer Steve Cohen, a member of Citizens for Peace and Tolerance, said, “The City of Boston sold land to the Mosque for $175,000. This land was worth some place between $450,000 and $1 million. This is a religious group that can raise $22 million from contributors in the Middle East. Why do they need financial assistance?”

Cohen continued, “So many citizens are asking the question, why does this mosque, which is preaching such abhorrent views, and has access to millions of dollars raised in Saudi Arabia, why is this mosque being subsidized by the city of Boston?”

A suit has been filed by a Roxbury resident contending that the land sale violates the separation of mosque and state. The mayor's office did not respond to our request for an interview.

No less than Bernard Lewis, the world-renowned Arab expert at Princeton, told us the Wahabbi brand of Islam can be compared to the Ku Klux Klan.

Hale commented, “If the Ku Klux Klan built an academy in Boston, the Boston Globe would be all over them. But for some reason they have been reluctant to say what is clearly true about the teachers of Wahabbi Islam, that they are intolerant bigots, and sometimes violent, to boot.”

Former Harvard professor Dr. Ahmed Mansour says when he visited the present mosque in Cambridge with his wife, he found Wahabbi reading materials that preached hatred toward America.

CBN News tried repeatedly to interview new ISB Chairman Yousef Abou-Leban. Although the ISB says it has begun a new period of "transparency" and outreach to the media, the leadership declined to talk on camera with us. On its website, the ISB says, the "negative media attention given to the ISB is not the result of honest, diligent journalism, but of malicious intent to discredit our organization and the new Cultural Center in Boston."

The ISB website has also put a statement of faith on its Web page that condemns bigotry, racism and anti-Semitism. It also affirms the equality of men and women, although we found instructions on the website on the correct way a man should beat his wife.

Hale said, “There are many people who wonder why we would be picking on a mosque, and what we have tried to explain to people is that we have no objection to a mosque, it's the leaders of this mosque that we object to and have concerns about…This kind of teaching plants a bomb in the heart. There is such a thing as radical Islam. It's real. It's everywhere. It's first victims are moderate Muslims who feel left out of these radical mosques.”

But the mosque in Roxbury will be built, and it will be one of the largest mosques in America. Dr. Mansour says the Wahabbis teach that mosques in Christian nations are viewed as outposts ... in the land of the infidel.

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