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December 23, 2004

Activists support local Muslim group

Yawu Miller

Representatives of civil rights organizations and religious leaders gathered in a park opposite the construction site of the Islamic Society of Boston’s new mosque last Friday to denounce what many said is an atmosphere of intolerance against Muslims in the United States.

The show of support for the ISB comes two months after the organization was hit with a string of negative stories in the mainstream media alleging ties to radical Islamic groups and terrorist organizations.

Activists at the press conference denounced the negative media coverage and expressed solidarity with the Muslims.

“We stand today with the Islamic Society of Boston because we deplore guilt by association and attempts in incite hatred and even violence by depicting the mosque as guilty of associating with terrorists,” said American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts Executive Director Carol Rose.

Rose and others at the press conference depicted the negative news coverage of the ISB as part of a wider climate of anti-Muslim sentiment that has grown in the post-September 11 era. A nation-wide poll conducted by Cornell University last week found that nearly half of all Americans think the U.S. government should restrict the civil liberties of Muslim Americans.

Locally, Muslim organizations in Massachusetts have reported an increase in hate crimes. Two weeks ago, a mosque in Springfield was broken into and set ablaze.

Law enforcement officials in Springfield say the arson was part of a robbery, but Mahdi Bray, a spokesman for ISB, said the fire was part of a larger pattern of growing hatred against Muslims.

“If there were two Muslim youth in a church or synagogue robbing and setting a fire, would the community react in the same way?” he questioned. “I think not.”

Imam Rasul, who presides over the Springfield mosque, urged his fellow Muslims not to be bitter over the arson.

“All it was was a building,” he said during the press conference. “The temple is inside our hearts and our souls.”

Friday’s press conference, held in Jeep Jones Park, featured representatives from Christian, Jewish and Muslim congregations. Neither the Black Ministerial Alliance nor the Ten Point Coalition sent a representative to speak at the event. Also absent were the city’s major Jewish organizations — the Anti Defamation League, the American Jewish Congress, The American Jewish Committee and the Jewish Community Relations Council.

Negative media coverage of the ISB and its mosque began last year with a string of Boston Herald articles alleging that former ISB president Osama M. Kandil had been linked to a philanthropic agency suspected of having ties to terrorist organizations. The Herald article also accused former board member Walid Fitaihi of writing anti-Israeli articles during the beginning of the second Intifadah in Palestine in 2000.

The ISB has since distanced itself from Fitaihi and denounced his writings.

In October, when a second barrage of critical stories questioned the deal through which the Boston Redevelopment Authority sold ISB the parcel of land on which the mosque is being built, Mayor Thomas Menino called for an investigation of the deal.

Following the press conference, the ISB official faced a barrage of questions from reporters. ISB board member Anwar Kazmi assured Boston Globe reporter Stephen Kurkjian that the mosque would not allow speakers there to make prejudicial statements.

“We’re told that our path is the middle path,” Bray added, quoting the prophet Muhammad. “Extremism is the exception. We follow the rule.”

 

 

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