WHEN WE LAST LOOKED at the Islamic Society of Boston's (ISB) efforts to build a mega-mosque in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, the project was beleaguered. Insufficiently funded and riddled with negative media coverage, the ISB lashed out by filing suit against more than a dozen Boston area residents that it blamed for hostile press clippings. It further claimed that the negative press was the result of a tortious conspiracy hatched by the defendants, and that the scheme had succeeded by making the ISB's fundraising hopelessly difficult.
Meanwhile, another lawsuit was launched almost simultaneously. This one, filed by Boston resident John Policastro, claimed that the City of Boston had shown unconstitutional favoritism to the ISB by giving it a piece of land valued at over $400,000 at a discount of roughly 50 percent.
At the time of our last piece on the matter, I labeled the ISB's suit contemptible and frivolous. So it remains.
I also stated that the Policastro case had great potential. To date, the Policastro suit has lived up to its promise, bringing to light some rather curious actions undertaken by the City of Boston.
LAWSUIT #1: THE ISB vs. THE WORLD
Even though the ISB's original suit named well over a dozen defendants, one of the suit's curiosities pertains to a party whose name was noticeably absent--Ahmed Mansour.
Ahmed Mansour is a moderate Muslim cleric. Mansour sought refuge in America when a Wahabbist fatwa calling for his assassination forced him to flee his native Egypt. After being granted asylum by
the U.S. government and moving to Boston, Mansour began visiting the ISB and was appalled by what he saw. In particular, the ISB's willingness to seek and receive the favor of controversial cleric Yussuf al-Qaradawi outraged Mansour. Al-Qaradawi is perhaps best known in America for the enthusiastic embrace he receives from the academic establishment in spite of his outspoken support for Palestinian suicide bombers (even female suicide bombers), as well as a 1995 speech he gave in Toledo where he vowed Islam would conquer both America and Europe.
According to the affidavit he filed soon after the ISB lodged its suit, Mansour, more than any other individual, is responsible for the negative press coverage that rained down on the ISB. And yet, oddly, the ISB did not name Mansour as one of the defendants. In his affidavit, Mansour alleged that this was because the ISB wanted its suit to appear as a struggle between Muslims and non-Muslims.
Regardless of the ISB's motivations, Mansour soon got his wish; the ISB amended its suit, naming him as a co-defendant in the action. With Mansour's inclusion, the perversity of the ISB's legal action became apparent--a group dubiously claiming to represent moderate reformist Islam was suing a cleric who is a genuine champion of moderate reformist Islam.
Including Mansour wasn't the only sign of the ISB taking the offensive. In February, the ISB produced an affidavit prepared by the dean of American academia's Islam apologists, John Esposito. Currently presiding over Georgetown's Prince Alalweed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, Esposito is perhaps best known for publishing an article in the summer of 2001 ridiculing the U.S. establishment's preoccupation with Osama bin Laden. The issue of Fletcher Forum magazine in which this ill-timed observation appeared was still on newsstands when bin Laden's minions brought down the World Trade Center, killing almost 3,000 civilians in the process.
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