A press release from Citizens for Peace and Tolerance about the new mosque in Boston:
New Citizens Group Challenges Mosque Leaders to Address Honestly the Radical Islamist Roots of Boston MosqueConcerned about threat to Boston 's tolerant communal tradition
October 5th, 2004 -Citizens for Peace and Tolerance ( CPT), a group of concerned citizens, academics, and community activists, today called on the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) to honestly answer concerns about radical Islamist roots of its $22 million Roxbury mosque. CPT, a new group comprised of Christians, Muslims and Jews, is responding to recent media reports which document a troubling connection between the Islamic Society of Boston and radical Islamists and terrorist organizations including Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood. CPT spokespersons are also very concerned over the reluctance of the Boston political establishment and many in the media to discuss these matters.
CPT spokesperson Dennis Hale, a Boston College professor of history, said that the organization believes in the diversity of the Boston community and in the need to promote a climate of tolerance and civil society. "This is not about a mosque being built in Boston," he said. "It is about the potential radicalization of the Boston Muslim community." Hale said CPT takes pride in Boston's long tradition of welcoming diverse groups of immigrants, and commends Mayor Thomas Menino for his leadership in this area.
CPT is concerned that some of the founders of the Islamic center in Boston may be part of a global and national effort by radicals and extremists to control mosques and radicalize their communities. Hale noted that "Muslims are the main victims of radical Islamists. Radical Islamists using funding from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states have taken over many mosques and now control a significant portion of all mosques in North America." He also noted that there are several documented reports around the country of Mosque leaders with connections to terrorist organizations. "This is a disturbing development for moderate Muslims and for peaceful coexistence in our nation and communities."
Steve Cohen, a local lawyer and member of the group, said, "We are troubled by certain statements and actions by the leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston. We do not believe that the ISB has been truthful and forthcoming about the center's founders, their hateful ideology and their relationship to the center." Cohen added that, "too often radical Muslims use the vocabulary of tolerance and compassion to obfuscate and deny their radical agenda. Radical Islamists have frequently replaced boards of trustees, using well intentioned, highly articulate and educated moderates as spokespersons."
The ISB has made non-credible excuses in response to media inquires. These excuses include the claims: that words were taken out of their "historic and linguistic" context and that words have multiple and arbitrary meanings. When reporters found a radical cleric on their Board, the ISB called it an "administrative oversight". Citizens for Peace and Tolerance is asking for an honest recognition by ISB officials of the seriousness of the charges raised by media reports.
CPT announced it is seeking to enlist moderate Muslims in support of its goal of a hate-free Boston. "We are concerned by the ISB's refusal to clearly and unambiguously disavow any and all Wahhabi and Muslim Brotherhood hateful and racist ideology as it appears in texts of their library," noted Hale.
"We are also disturbed by the lack of public discourse and very limited media coverage relating to the role that radical Islam plays in American mosques and in particular the Islamic center being built in Boston," Dennis Hale noted. "We are in a rhetorical trap of political correctness that does not know how to be ethnically sensitive and honest at the same time. This is very dangerous, given the intentions of radical Islamists. There's a knee-jerk reaction by most of our civic leaders to refrain from any criticism of a perceived vulnerable minority. They don't know how to deal with it; they are concerned about being accused of being anti-Muslim, and so they avoid it. Unfortunately, radical Islamists are well aware of this aversion and fully exploit it."
Citizens for Peace and Tolerance is planning to promote public discourse about the threat of radical Islam and its potential influence on Boston's tradition of tolerance.
Is fractional awareness better than none? Like asking if fractional democracy (in Singapore, for e.g.) better than none?
Boston citizens group has developed at least some awareness, (but not enough, apparently) about the ugly truths about islam. Had they known what we now know at JW, theyb wouldn't be sugarcoating words and sounding merely concerned but downright indignant!
Wonder how much play this got in tha mainstream media. Its a long and hard fight. Like Pres. Bush said :
"Its a tough job. Its hard work, you know."
But we should keep up the good fight.
The first mistake this group has made was asking for, and expecting honest answers from the Muslims inhabiting this proposed Mosk.....
I hope a judgement comes down from the lawsuit filed that the city broke laws during the sale of the property this Islamic Armory is supposed to be built on.
One should not forget the independent lawsuit, by Mr. Policastro, which raises the Constitutional question. In selling land for $171,000 which had a far higher market price (and even the $400,000 estimate is far lower than market value), the city agreed to accept, and to value at a very high rate, what is essentially Muslim propaganda. The clever mosque promoters offered a "lecture series" on Islam -- that they valued at more than $117,000. They also "offered" a library of 5,000 books pertaining to Islam (one can just imagine the serried ranks of Qur'ans, collections of hadith, endless commentaries in 30-volumes, all bound in the same garish quasi-leather bindings that one finds in all Islamic bookstores, which are virtually the only kind one finds in most of the Middle East. Now it is depressing enough that Mayor Menino seemed to think that this mosque was a great idea, a really splendid way to encourage "interfaith understanding." But of course the least intelligent way of coming to understand Islam is to listen to the sly apologetics and rigmarole of its spokesmen, well-versed in taqiyya. Does Mayor Menino know anything about taqiyya? Does he know anything about Islam, except that it is called a "religion" and, therefore, it must be Good because Religions are Good.
We are ruled by fools, and those fools make decisions, that cause our lives to be more difficult, unpleasant, and ultimately, far more insecure. These are the fools who, in running France, let in large numbers of Muslims without thinking about the consequences of the belief-system that they possessed -- it could not be seen, it was not visible, but they brought it in their mental baggage, though it was not declared at customs. These are the fools who may permit Turkey to become part of the E.U. These are the fools who do not realize that "rebuilding" Iraq has nothing to do with the real problem -- which is not to effect a further transfer of wealth from the Infidel country (America) to a Muslim country, but to let all the Muslims, everywhere, see the results for themselves of their own political, economic, and intellectual failures --without being constantly rescued by the Infidels, who are tricked into, or trick themselves into, supplying a kind of self-imposed jizya.
Now comes the mosque, with all of its unsavory obvious connections. And the liminal issue is surely: is such a transfer, by Menino and his "advisors" on this (who were they? who thought this was a good idea? who had his doubts? and what will voters do -- will they make sure to express their outrage at the polls; a defeat for Menino on this one issue would be telling, and a lesson for other political figures), constitutional? Can a city government decide to transfer property in a sweetheart deal, to a "religion"? Of course, if Islam is not a religion, then perhaps the Establishment Clause question will not arise. An interesting idea, but it is doubtful that such a defense, that Islam is not a religion and so there is no problem of separation of church (mosque) and state, will be raised by the Board that controls the mosque.
Here are the citizens of Boston, home of the Bean and the Cod, subsidizing the propaganda that if successful, would do them, and their modes of thought, and ways of life, permanently in -- every last Cabot and Lowell and Holmes and Mark DeWolfe Howe and Samuel Eliot Morison and Harry Austryn Wolfson and Pierre Monteux and Yo-Yo Ma among them.
Hugh says:
"Here are the citizens of Boston, home of the Bean and the Cod, subsidizing the propaganda that if successful, would do them, and their modes of thought, and ways of life, permanently in. . ."
Even more distressing is that Boston played such a prominent role in the founding of this country, and has had to accomplish a 180 in order to do so much of what it is doing today.
If the propoganda were successful, it would do in the Bostonians' ways of life, but not their modes of thought; a teensy bit of evidence for that is the very fact that they are subsidizing the propaganda.
Unfortunately, there are many convergent lines of thought between Islam and modern American liberalism, and it is this convergence that is making it so very difficult for so many Americans to understand and properly oppose Islam.
Would that it were not so!
This looks like a great initiative, like it's really getting to be possible to actually start discussing radical Islamism in the States, or am I just a dreamer? In Europe, a group like that would be dismissed right away as extreme right, racist, Muslim-haters, period. Never mind the talk about peace and tolerance, that's just a cover for racism and Islamophobia (obviously, it's only the Islamists who actually mean it when they talk about peace and tolerance...)
The Boston Globe (the largest circulation regional newspaper) finally did its first story on this issue on October 5 thanks to the Citizens for Peace and Tolerance press release (although its a short story, and not in the front section of the paper). I actually wrote an email to Professor Hale of CPT to commend him for having his group bring attention to the issues surrounding this mosque.
He wrote back and said that, unlike some other media outlets, the Globe did not cover the CPT press conference the morning of October 5. He also was of the opinion that the Globe did not previously cover this story because it feared being viewed as anti-Muslim.
I'll be curious to see if the Islamic Society of Boston is able to keep getting away with subterfuge on this issue. Unfortunately, I predict they will get away with just that since even the small amount of media coverage now being given is likely to wane soon.
The ironic and purposeful planting of the Grand Mosque of Boston, so grotesque and out of place in the heart of America's sacred shrines to Liberty, is made even sordid by the fact that Boston politicians have made their deal with the devil through the acceptance of "gifts" for both the politicos and the city, reminiscent of the deal made in the City of Rome where we now see an enormous, oversized, grotesque mosque, built in view of the Vatican that challenges the authority of the Roman Catholic Church, another irony that isn't lost on either knowledge Westerners or Muslims.
Soon we will hear a rival to the walking tours as tourists are led to the sacred sites of the American Revolution in the form of a blared call to prayer five times a day. Will the tourists be required to remove themselves from the precincts of the mosque during services or from the mosque area altogether as they are in certain cities of the Muslim world? This how it starts. This isn't rocket science, folks, the camel's nose, no the camel's head is now under the tent!
How ironic that in order to avoid any terrorist attacks and violence,leaders appease Muslims by taking steps to create a veneer of peace and tolerance within Islam.
I watched a TV debate and a Muslim male stated that if he keeps being looked at as if he's a terrorists then that will just prompt him to do a terrorist act.
Thank God he's got Peace and Love of Allah to restrain his psychopathic desires,I never knew Muslims were so predisposed to violece
that the slightest perceived insult triggers Jihad.
No CAIR - KNOW FREEDOM