In October of 2005, I received formal notice that I was being sued for defamation by the Islamic Society of Boston. The ISB, with headquarters in Cambridge, was planning to build the largest Islamic center in the Northeast, on land that it had purchased from the Boston Redevelopment Authority for a substantial discount — despite numerous reports in the press about the links between ISB officials and militant Islamic groups such as Hamas and the Muslim Brotherhood, as well as their preaching of anti-Semitism. I was part of a group – Citizens for Peace and Tolerance – that had attempted to get the city to reexamine its partnership with the ISB; my “defamation” consisted of making statements about the ISB for which there was a wealth of documentary evidence.

Among those also charged: the Boston Herald; the local Fox television station; the David Project, a Jewish advocacy organization; and the Investigative Project, whose founder, Steven Emerson, was among the individuals named in the suit. My partners in CPT, Steve Cohen and Ahmed Monsour, a political refugee from Egypt with intimate knowledge of Islamic radicalism and its dangers, were also named.

On May 29, 2007, the ISB dropped its lawsuit, roughly a year-and-a-half after it was filed. None of the defendants had to apologize or pay any money. In the months before the ISB decided to abandon its claims against us, the discovery process – often the worst part of a protracted civil litigation – was uncovering even more disturbing facts about the ISB than we had previously known: multiple out-of-state bank accounts; millions of dollars in subsidies from Saudi Arabia; a close connection to imprisoned terrorist Abdurhaman Alamoudi and Muslim Brotherhood “spiritual director” Yusef Quaradawi; donations to the Holy Land Foundation; and more. We had said that the ISB’s leaders were not the moderate Muslims they were pretending to be. The discovery process was proving that we were more right than we knew.

Unfortunately, the end of the lawsuit did not mean the end of the story. The men who sued us are still in control of the ISB, and in the days after the lawsuit ended, they went public with their longstanding connection to the Muslim American Society, which is the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The largest Islamic center in the northeast will thus continue to be what it was from the beginning: a center for the promotion of the intolerant religious ideology of the Wahabbi clerics, and the fascist political ideology of the Muslim Brotherhood, right in the heart of Boston, with the assistance of the city’s taxpayers.

Every story teaches a lesson; this story teaches several. I am convinced that these lessons will be useful in the near future, to others who might find themselves in a situation like ours. There are Islamic centers all over the United States that have the same pedigree: Saudi money, Wahabi theology, and Muslim Brotherhood politics. Conflicts like the one in Boston will be with us for a long time to come. So here are some things to think about when raising questions about the Islamists in your backyard.

TAKE OUT A LIABILITY POLICY. If you oppose the spread of Islamist ideology in the US you can pretty much count on getting sued. Litigation to stifle free speech is a useful strategy for organizations that can afford it. Even though they were forced to drop their lawsuit, the ISB forced the defendants collectively to spend millions of dollars in our defense. (More than a dozen corporate and individual defendants were represented by four law firms.) And while it is true that the ISB also had to spend millions in their attempt to silence us, their millions came from the Gulf (your petrodollars at work). Our millions came from our own pockets – and from our insurance providers, from pro bono work by our defense team (Jeff Robbins and Joe Lipchitz of the firm of Mintz, Levin, Cohn, Ferris, Glvsky and Popeo), and from the generosity of donors. We were lucky. Others in the future won’t be so lucky, and will need to take reasonable precautions.

DON’T COUNT ON SUPPORT FROM THE MAINSTREAM PRESS. Only the conservative news outlets in Boston, and conservative talk-show host Michael Graham, covered the ISB story; the Boston Globe showed almost no editorial interest in the possibility that Islamic radicals were bamboozling the city into a partnership that citizens would soon have reason to regret. In fact, once the ISB story got some traction, the Globe offered the ISB’s leaders a chance to “spin” the controversy in a favorable direction, with a mendacious editorial entitled “A Moderating Mosque.” In the Globe’s view, the unfortunate mistakes that ISB officials might have made in the past (the demented anti-Semitic ravings of its treasurer, Walid Fitahi, for example) were now in the past, and we should all move on to a bright multicultural future. The Globe was gracious enough to meet with the ISB’s critics as well, but there is no evidence that the editors believed anything we told them. And once the lawsuit began, the Globe did its best to portray the dispute as an unfortunate squabble between local Muslims and local Jews (because of the close involvement of the David Project). In this view, it was just an unfortunate misunderstanding that would soon be smoothed over by liberal applications of “interfaith dialogue”. This falsehood was abetted by the Globe’s decision to shut its pages to opposing views. Members of Citizens for Peace and Tolerance were never called for interviews, and even the Letters to the Editor column was closed to us – even in response to articles that mentioned us by name. The Globe was not the only offender: the local PBS station (Channel 2); the local NPR radio outlets; and the Christian Science Monitor – all ran stories that ignored the critics and sanitized the ISB’s record, all the while making it clear that the critics were either bigots or hysterics or both.

Continued in Part II

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