Interfaith relations are finally looking up in Boston after the announcement of a temporary cease in hostilities between the Islamic Society of Boston and the city of Boston, and groups and individuals that have sought to stop them from building a mosque.

Boston-area Jewish and Muslim leaders sighed in relief yesterday at the resolution of a lengthy legal dispute over the planned construction of a mosque in Roxbury, saying the development cleared the way for renewed local dialogue between adherents of the two faiths.

It’s been almost 5 years since Boston mayor Thomas Menino and Massachusetts Congressman Michael Capuano attended the groundbreaking for what was slated to become the largest Islamic Cultural Center in New England. On that day, Mayor Menino hopefully announced:

Boston is now – and has always been – a City of vibrant faith communities. The ISB Cultural Center builds on that tradition – and provides a new context for religious and cultural exchange. By creating a space for inter-faith dialog, this Center will bring both the Muslim community and the community at large closer together.

But in marked contrast to city and state leaders’ enthusiasm about the project, a group that included some Boston residents, well-known right wing Israel advocacy group the David Project, and self-styled terrorism expert Steve Emerson, reacted with tremendous alarm and waged a full scale campaign to stop construction of the mosque.

Christian Science Monitor religion reporter Jane Lampman wrote:

It’s a microcosm of the suspicions about Islam that have played out across America since 9/11.

After the city of Boston conveyed a parcel of land to the ISB, articles appeared in the Boston Herald in 2003 linking society leaders to Islamic extremists. The ISB denied the story, responding in detail to what it saw as inflammatory distortions. “When you place a picture of Osama bin Laden next to a picture of our mosque, that is completely misrepresentative of who we are,” says Salma Kazmi, assistant project director.

Boston’s Fox TV station followed with broadcasts on the charges, and two local organizations - the David Project, a pro-Israel group, and Citizens for Peace and Tolerance (CPT) - have continued to publicize them and press for public hearings.

CPT says Boston could become a “potential radical Islamic center.” The ISB counters that media and local groups, with help from terrorism analyst Steven Emerson, have conspired to halt construction and “incite public sentiment against area Muslims.”

In addition to the media campaign, which was based on information fed by Steve Emerson to Boston Herald reporter Jonathan Wells (who later went to Fox-TV and produced a similar set of stories), the group recruited a local resident James Policastro to sue Boston and the ISB for selling land at a reduced rate to the builders of the mosque. (The superior court judge ruled that the lawsuit brought against the Islamic Society of Boston, the Boston Redevelopment Authority and the Roxbury Community College was without merit and dismissed the case.)

After construction of the mosque stalled and donations trickled to a halt because of the negative publicity, the Islamic Society of Boston decided to fight back with a lawsuit against 16 defendants including Steve Emerson, the David Project, The Boston Herald and Fox 25-TV for “defamation and an unlawful civil conspiracy to stop the construction of the mosque in Roxbury.”

Last week, the ISB dropped the lawsuit. The Associate Press reported:

Two sides in a legal dispute about the construction of a Boston mosque agreed to drop legal actions against each other, a move that supporters of the mosque say will allow construction to move forward.

The decision comes three months after a Suffolk Superior Court judge dismissed a lawsuit by Boston resident James Policastro claiming it was unconstitutional for the city of Boston to sell land at a discount price to developers of an Islamic center. The judge ruled Policastro had no standing to bring the suit.

Policastro agreed to drop future appeals after the Islamic Society of Boston agreed to drop a defamation lawsuit against opponents and several news media outlets, including the Boston Herald and TV station FOX 25, which reported on the sale. The defendants in the Islamic Society lawsuit also agreed not to pursue legal fees from the society.

Bilal Kaleem, executive director of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American Society, said the settlement would allow the Islamic Society to finish the mosque, which he said is 70% complete. He said the settlement would also help repair relations with other religious groups.

“This was never about obtaining monetary damages, but defending the basic constitutional and civic right of building a place of worship,” he said.

Unfortunately, this does not mark the end of the litigious battle between the Islamic Society of Boston, and the David Project

Critics of the mosque also claimed victory and said they would continue to seek information about the project.

The David Project, a nonprofit group, said it would pursue a lawsuit against the Boston Redevelopment Authority seeking documents about the sale.

“We were determined from the beginning to act the way citizens should, by asking questions about this matter and by refusing to be intimidated into staying silent,” said Charles Jacobs, president and founder of the David Project. “We intend to continue as we have before.”

What this case is really about: going after Muslims as part of the “war on terror”

(The specific charges and counter-charges are too numerous to go into here, but you can read the David Project’s version of events, with media links, here, and some of the ISB fact sheets responding to the charges here and here.)

Jewish Voice for Peace, the group that sponsors this blog, was one of 3 Jewish groups (including the Boston Tikkun Community and Tekiah), in addition to other Protestant, Catholic and Muslim groups, which filed amicus briefs in support of the ISB lawsuit.

These are battles – in the press, in the courts, and in local community settings – that we can expect to occur more and more in this era of war and intolerance. From one perspective, this controversy is about muzzling – each side vociferously claims the other is attacking its First Amendment rights.

However, one could easily argue that what many Muslims and Arabs face transcends garden-variety muzzling and involves outright criminalization. In a post 9-11 world, it certainly makes sense for sensitivities, fears and surveillance to be heightened.

But those in the US who pursue a strategy of treating all Muslims as potential terrorists are doomed to achieve the same miserable results that the US has achieved in foreign policy through a parallel approach. Rather than supporting moderate Muslims, these groups, much like those who have cheered on misplaced Israeli support for a brutal occupation, play into the hands of extremists by demonizing and criminalizing all Muslims and/or Arabs.

Few people more than Steve Emerson better embody this approach. He has waged a very public and lucrative campaign against what he calls Muslim “quote-civil rights groups,” like the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), which he claims are actually all “jihadist.” In his world-view, any Muslim group that claims to be moderate is a front that must be unmasked and prosecuted. For that reason, to some, Steve Emerson, like Daniel Pipes, is a hero. To others, he is selling hate and prejudice of the worst kind. Lost in the hyperbole is the line between important law enforcement, and outright demonization of an entire group.

Whether or not one supports the Islamic Society of Boston’s lawsuit, and many groups preferred instead a path of mediation, one thing is certain: as revealed in the discovery process, the David Project’s fishing expedition for ways to block the mosque in Boston crossed a line from citizen advocacy to profoundly shameful efforts at preventing a group from practicing their religion.

In playing the self-appointed role of Department of Pre-Crime, and unable to secure any evidence of legal substance pertaining to terrorism, they resorted instead to a publicity smear campaign as well as a lawsuit on a tangential issue. And they claim they are not done. For a Jewish group to do this to another religious group is almost inconceivable

In fact, other Jewish groups have not been impressed. The Boston Globe reported

During the legal standoff, many local Jewish groups opposed the David Project’s stance, revealing fissures within the Jewish community itself.

“The people involved in the lawsuit did not represent the Jewish community,” said Rabbi Moshe Waldoks of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline. “The David Project is more conservative than a lot of people in the Jewish community.”

Waldoks said he had been quietly meeting with Islamic leaders even during the course of the lawsuit in an effort to keep the post-Sept. 11 dialogue alive. He said that local rabbis and imams had several lively discussions about faith and culture.

According to the legal chronology, after a gentleman named Bill Sapers’ various unsuccessful efforts to stop the mosque, now well underway, he sought the help of Steve Emerson.

As the defendants portray him, Emerson is an award-winning investigative journalist and leading authority on terrorism and Islamic extremists groups in America. According to plaintiffs, he is nothing more than a paid polemicist who promotes his anti-Muslim agenda by disseminating poorly researched and outright false information about Islamic groups to media representatives for money.

Sapers asked Emerson for assistance in collecting information about members or former members of the ISB. Emerson and his organization, the defendant Investigative Project, responded by providing Sapers with a report Emerson prepared in the summer of 2002 which asserted, among other things, that plaintiff Kandil had ties to a ‘terrorist supporting infrastructure in the U.S.’ Over the next few months, Emerson put together more material about ISB
members. Plaintiffs allege that this material contained false and defamatory statements about them.

Sapers took the information he obtained from Emerson and got in touch with Boston Herald reporter Jonathan Wells. Over the next few months, Sapers and Emerson were in frequent contact with Wells. Wells in turn used the material he received from Sapers and Emerson to write a series of stories about the ISB and the Project, the first of which appeared in the Boston Herald on October 28, 2003. These newspaper reports, which asserted that the ISB was directly
connected to and funded by radical terrorist organizations, lie at the heart of the plaintiffs’ defamation claim. As to Sapers’ and Emerson’s role in those published reports, the plaintiffs allege that they served as anonymous sources for Wells and knowingly gave him and other reporters false information about the plaintiffs, including information that the ISB funded the terrorist groups of Hamas and Hezbollah, and that the plaintiff Kandil was connected to terrorist training camps and Osama bin Laden.


The right to free speech or the right to practice one’s religion? Why refuse mediation?

Both the ISB and the defendants each felt the case pitted one First Amendment right against another:

The plaintiffs — the ISB, its board-of-directors chair Yousef Abou-Allaban and board-of-trustees chair Osama Kandil — contend that the defendants conspired to deny them the right to practice their religion by falsely linking them to terror and undermining their efforts to construct a $22 million mosque and cultural center in Roxbury.

The defendants — including two media outlets, terrorism analyst Steven Emerson, and officials of The David Project and Citizens for Peace and Tolerance — argue that the plaintiffs have engaged in an effort to quash free speech by using intimidation to prevent people from questioning whether the ISB is linked to Islamic terrorism.

The defendants would have a more compelling case for their argument about the quashing of free speech had they said yes just once to numerous efforts at mediation. But offers, including one made right before the suit was filed, were soundly and repeatedly rejected by the David Project and others.

As one Boston based group (unrelated to JVP) Jews Support the Mosque wrote here:

Following attempts at mediation, the presidents of Hebrew College and Andover Newton Theological School proposed a settlement to the ISB and the David Project. The organizations were asked to terminate lawsuits, publicly condemn terrorism, affirm the right of all communities to build houses of worship, and work together to create an interfaith center.5 The ISB agreed to halt the lawsuit against the David Project, but the David Project refused to respond to the proposal.6 The ISB has also accepted a more recent proposal to suspend all litigation in favor of mediation. Once again, the David Project has not responded.7

Another Boston-based Jewish group, the venerable Workmen’s Circle held out hope for mediation when they published a petition, publicly supported by the ISB, that implored the fighting parties to “engage in global, multi-party mediation, to be conducted by a professional mediator, with no pre-conditions.” The Workmen’s Circle’s petition continues, calling out the David Project and other defendants for refusing mediation, and citing the damage this refusal has caused for Boston’s faith communities:

……..The ISB and its related plaintiffs have stated their willingness to sit at the mediation table and try for peace. The other parties have not. And while some discussion amongst the parties may have resulted since then, professional mediation is, by far, the most likely road to a final and prompt resolution of these intractable disputes. It is a resolution our community — Jewish, Muslim, and all others — sorely needs and deserves.

Of course there is a fundamental and sacred right to free speech, but there is no right to libel. In fact, Steve Emerson, who once sued a former investigative reporter for The Associated Press, the media outlet the Weekly Planet, and its senior editor John Sugg for $11 million in damages for an expose in a publication that Emerson claimed “maliciously and repeatedly published false and defamatory utterances” in an “ongoing campaign to undermine Emerson’s credibility and damage his professional and personal reputation,” would presumably be the first person to agree. (The United States District Court for the District of Columbia threw out the case.)

Had the ISB’s lawsuit been groundless and a case of muzzling, as the defendants have charged, presumably the judge would have thrown it out when the defendants filed for dismissal. Instead, the judge found grounds for such a case.

Who are the players?
Finally, it’s worth understanding a bit about the key players in this story to understand the broader context and how they tend to work.

The David Project is run by Charles Jacobs, a brilliant promoter and supporter of Israeli expansionism who requires a separate lengthy post just to describe his various endeavors, many of which “support” right wing Israeli policies through demonizing Muslims and Arabs. (This interesting piece by Muzzlewatch blogger Dr. Andrew Schamess or this investigative piece on Jacobs are interesting places to start.)

He is, among other things, the co-founder of CAMERA, a right wing Israel media watchdog group with an enemies list that includes everyone from the New York Times and the Washington Post to Amnesty International and National Public Radio:

NPR has had the unfortunate distinction of emerging as one of CAMERA’s favored targets. In CAMERA’s hometown of Boston, CAMERA and the Boston Israel Action Committee have succeeded in costing local NPR affiliate station WBUR 90.9 FM between one and two million dollars in sponsorship funds, according to WBUR spokesperson Mary Stohn.

[CAMERA associate director ] Safian explained that in addition to calling on individual donors to divest from the network, the group has concentrated on targeting NPR’s underwriters, many of which he said contribute $50,000 to $100,000 at a time to the network.

As we’ve written before, the David Project is best known for its documentary, “Columbia Unbecoming”, a film that painted Columbia University as a center of anti-Israeli scholarship and student intimidation, but which was thoroughly deconstructed by New York Jewish Week–a number of students featured in the film “had not even studied under the professors who were being accused.” (Watch an Australian television documentary about what happened here, or read the transcript here which includes an interview with the Jewish Week reporter who covered the story)

As to Steve Emerson, whether or not you know the name, you’re probably familiar with his work. After the Oklahoma City bombing, it was Steve Emerson who insinuated on national TV that Middle Easterners had bombed the federal office building.

Emerson has been called “poison” by The New Yorker’s top investigative reporter Seymour Hersh – a Pulitzer prize winner who knows good journalism. (Go here to hear Hersh commenting last week on the fighting in northern Lebanon). But many consider him a prophet for predicting the attacks of 9-11.

Efforts by people and groups like Emerson and the David Project to collapse everything from the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and Muslim civil rights groups to al Qaeda and 9-11 into one big war on terrorism have been, to say the least, a colossal failure. Instead of making the world a safer place, they have made it profoundly less safe, for all of us.

The mainstreaming of hate of Muslims and Arabs should alarm every concerned citizen, regardless of faith, race or ethnicity. One day, we will all look back on this period with the same shame we now feel about the internment of Japanese during WWII.

–Written with assistance from Sarah Anne Minkin and Sara Norman

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