[wvns] Campaign to stop mosque in Boston fails

The Islamic Society of Boston drops defamation lawsuit against
opponents of mosque, construction to proceed
by Cecilie Surasky

http://www.muzzlewatch.com/?p=153#more-153

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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