E-Mail This Article to a Friend Trial and terror, continued
	Related Links   Islamic Society of Boston The plaintiffs, who allege that a group of journalists and activists have conspired to undermine the mosque project. Citizens for Peace and Tolerance One of the suit’s defendants, a group that has raised concerns about the ISB’s link to terrorism. Howard Cooper This site provides some background on Howard Cooper, the attorney who won a major libel suit against the Boston Herald earlier this year and is representing the plaintiffs in this case.

The suit alleges that officials from The David Project and Citizens for Peace and Tolerance joined in the effort and also began working with Wells, who left the Herald for Channel 25. In October 2004, Citizens for Peace and Tolerance, calling itself "a group of concerned citizens, academics, and community activists" called a press conference to ask the ISB "to honestly answer concerns about radical Islamist roots" of the mosque. In November 2004, Channel 25 aired an investigative story tying Abou-Allaban and Kandil to the Muslim Brotherhood. The suit characterizes that broadcast as defamatory and the "product" of a "media campaign" to target the mosque.

The plaintiffs cite as an example of this concerted venture a May 2004 document called "Ad-Hoc Mosque Group Preliminary Agenda," which lays out possible legal challenges to the project as well as the elements of a "political and media campaign" against the ISB.

In a Phoenix interview, ISB assistant director Salma Kazmi says the Herald stories generated a strong negative reaction. "In October 2003, when the Herald articles came out, obviously we were very concerned about the allegations being made," she said. "We started getting a lot of hate mail, even more so than after 9/11.... There’s an overall climate of fear in the Muslim community, there’s a fear there’s a terrorist under every rock. As best we can tell, these are people who decided to defame a community."

Arsalan Iftikhar, national legal director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), says the ISB case "is perfectly indicative of the growing anti-Islamic sentiment in America. The ISB is one of the largest Muslim communities in the Northeast, and it’s very important that Muslim organizations and individuals defend the image of the community from false assertions like the ones asserted in the lawsuit."

CAIR has recently been involved in two defamation suits, one against former North Carolina congressman Cass Ballenger, who had called the organization "the fundraising arm for Hezbollah." (CAIR is appealing a dismissal of that suit.) The other is against Andrew Whitehead, the proprietor of an "Anti-CAIR" Web site which claims, among other things, that the group is "a clear and present danger to our Constitution and our way of life."

The media defendants in the ISB suit have issued expressions of confidence in their work. "We’re standing behind the reporting," says a Herald spokeswoman. "The award-winning Fox25 News Investigative Team has a long history of compelling, solid investigative reporting, and the station stands behind the 2004 investigative report about the Islamic Society of Boston," says a Channel 25 statement released two weeks ago.

Citizens for Peace and Tolerance — whose Web site features what it calls a series of ISB "connections to terrorist organizations" — and The David Project, which describes itself as a bulwark against "the ideological onslaught against the Jewish state," issued similar releases. The lawsuit is "an obvious and ugly attempt at bullying American citizens into giving up their rights as citizens, the right to engage in free speech and inquiry," says the Citizens for Peace and Tolerance’s statement. Robbins says "there is some evidence that this lawsuit is one of several filed around the country as part of a strategy" to intimidate critics.

Among the defendants, the best-known figure is Steven Emerson, author of numerous books on terrorism and producer of the 1994 PBS documentary Jihad in America." Supporters say Emerson is a leading and long-time expert on Islamic terrorism — he has also frequently testified before Congress, including an appearance last week. Critics see him as an Islamophobe who makes dubious claims.

The lawsuit calls Emerson a "self-proclaimed terrorism ‘expert,’ " whose "findings have been ... severely criticized as both uninformed and biased against Muslims."

In an e-mail to the Phoenix, Emerson says "my record of having documented the existence of secret networks of ‘charities’ leaders and organizational entities connected to Hamas, Al-Qaeda, Islamic Jihad, Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia has been confirmed by government evidence, investigations, convictions, asset forfeitures and congressional hearings." Radical Islamic "groups claim that anyone who criticizes militant Islam is ‘racist’; their claim is no different than David Duke attacking his critics as anti-Christian."

A CHANCE AT CONCILIATION?

Right now, there doesn’t seem to be much ground for thinking there will be a meeting of the minds. On November 7, Abou-Allaban wrote a letter to Andrew Tarsy, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, saying "my colleagues and I are willin g to sit with you in an effort to discuss all matters of mutual concern between our communities towards healing our relations and promoting mutual understanding." The letter also asked the ADL to "publicly state its support for the construction of the Mosque and Cultural Center."

On November 8, the ADL sent out a statement that expressed "deep concern" about the ISB suit and added that "litigation should never be a vehicle to stifle legitimate efforts to raise public concern about bigotry, hatred or extremism." Tarsy did not return phone calls from the Phoenix seeking additional comment.

The Jewish Community Relations Council’s Kaufman also opposes the ISB strategy. "Basically, we really think this is an issue for dialogue, not litigation," she says.

With passions running so deep and with the stakes so high, is it possible that cooler heads could intervene? One player who would seem to have an interest in fostering dialogue is Mayor Thomas Menino. The mosque is on city land sold by the BRA. When the ISB faced allegations of anti-Semitism last year, in part for one of its official’s writings, the society distanced itself from those remarks in a crucial letter sent to Menino. Moreover, the suit could lead to an open and ugly rupture in the city’s hard-won interfaith relations.

But when asked to comment on the new ISB litigation or its implications this week, the mayor’s office declined.

Mark Jurkowitz can be reached at mjurkowitz[a]phx.com. You can read his Media Log here.