Posted on 12/10/2005 8:03:49 PM PST by strategofr
They started out as two fairly typical libel suits against two Boston news outlets. But the sweeping litigation just filed by the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) against the Boston Herald, Channel 25, and some activists is shaping up to be a nasty confrontation that could spill beyond the media universe to pit portions of the local Jewish and Muslim communities against each other, open deep social and ideological wounds, and generate international headlines.
Moreover, both sides claim to be fighting for core First Amendment freedoms.
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 the 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 claims are based upon an alleged unlawful joining together of all the named defendants in an effort to undermine the ISB and its leadership and ultimately to stop the building of a mosque and cultural center in Roxbury," says Howard Cooper, the attorney for the plaintiffs and the lawyer who won a February $2.1 million libel verdict against the Herald for Judge Ernest Murphy. The effect, he adds, "is to deprive people of a particular faith of their right to free associate and worship through a campaign of defamation."
A statement issued by the Investigative Project on Terrorism, of which Emerson is executive director, counters that "the lawsuit is a transparent attempt to discredit and silence those who raise concerns about the activities and danger of militant Islamic groups." Adds attorney Jeffrey Robbins, who is representing The David Project and Citizens for Peace and Tolerance: "It’s a fundamental question. Can people talk to people to raise questions about matters of extraordinary significance and public concern?"
The suit, filed in Suffolk Superior Court on October 31, is a significantly expanded version of two earlier libel suits. In February, Abou-Allaban sued WFXT-TV (Channel 25) after one of its reports identified him as a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, a terrorist group. In May, Kandil sued the Herald and Channel 25 for linking him to Islamic terrorism and by suggesting, as the suit claimed, that "both he and the ISB presented a danger to the community."
The plaintiffs say the discovery documents they received from Channel 25 provided the "impetus" for filing the far-reaching suit alleging an anti-ISB conspiracy between journalists and their sources. And what started as two interwoven libel cases alleging bad journalism has grown into something considerably more dramatic, divisive, and dangerous.
"This is an agonizing topic to talk about because there are legitimate grievances on both sides, but yet there’s also stereotyping and historic bigotry on both sides," says Chip Berlet, a senior analyst at Political Research Associates, a Somerville-based nonprofit research organization.
Nancy Kaufman is executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council, which last week released a statement expressing "deep disappointment" in the ISB suit. Asked how it would look to have a Boston courtroom battle over the mosque with Jewish-Muslim tensions as a subtext, she responds simply: "That’s not a great headline."
CHARGES AND COUNTERCHARGES
The ISB’s effort to build the largest mosque and cultural center in the Northeast had already generated its share of controversy. Last year, Boston resident James Policastro challenged the project in a suit in Suffolk Superior Court against the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA), the ISB, and Roxbury Community College. "It’s a sweetheart deal with a religious organization [and] you can’t do that," says his attorney, Evan Slavitt. "You can’t sell a below-market parcel to a religious institution." Last week, the judge denied a motion to dismiss the case.
In their new lawsuit characterizing the attack on the mosque as a conspiracy, the ISB and its officers allege that beginning in 2002, "a combination of media outlets, reporters, individuals and self-proclaimed ‘experts’ on radical Islam" joined forces to spread "false and defamatory statements, misleading innuendo and/or outright fabrication ... in an effort to undermine" the mosque project.
In a lengthy chronology of events, the suit alleges that William Sapers, a local resident opposed to the mosque, contacted Emerson in an effort to defeat the project, and that the two of them reached out to the Boston Herald and particularly to staffer Jonathan Wells to generate publicity. (Sapers, also a defendant, did not return phone calls.) A Herald series on the subject began with an October 28, 2003, front-page story headlined RADICAL ISLAM: OUTSPOKEN CLERIC, JAILED ACTIVIST TIED TO NEW HUB MOSQUE. A follow-up the next day charged that Kandil was "allegedly linked to a network of Muslim companies and charitable groups ... suspected by federal investigators of providing material support to Islamic terrorists."
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.
This is a subject of interest to me and I'm not finding much on it.
The Phoenix is REALLY liberal, just for your information. Lots of commie rants, alas, and Jurkowitz is a Bush hater, of course. I'm not disputing the article, but take this info from someone who's been reading the Phoenix for over 20 years. (Have to keep an eye on them, plus it's free now.)
"The Phoenix is REALLY liberal, just for your information."
Thanks.
it's a fooabulos read if you are looking for a homosexual to employ in one way or the other...or for some other piece of human refuse willing to degrade themselves just for the heck of it.. and some fast cash
Only in Boston! This is what happens in Lib country!
The Boston Phoenix is owned by Stephen Mindich, husband of the infamous Judge Maria Lopez.
http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/1805007/detail.html
(Link on that page to video no longer works.)
Liberal it may be, but this looks like a pretty good article that gives most of the details of this litigation.
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