Posted on 03/05/2020 9:16:46 AM PST by bitt
NYSUN.COM
In 2002, then-Sen Kerry Welcomed Boston Mosque Now Suspected of Ties to Wahhabism (Boston bomber a member)
By ELI LAKE, Staff Reporter of the Sun | October 22, 2004
WASHINGTON - Senator Kerry in 2002 welcomed the groundbreaking of a mosque in Boston that has come under recent scrutiny among some of the city’s religious leaders for its ties to the radical strain of Saudi-exported Islam known as Wahhabism.
On November 7, 2002, the Massachusetts lawmaker drafted a statement “recognizing the outstanding work of the Islamic Society of Boston.” The occasion was the start of construction of a new cultural center and mosque that was to build a partnership with the neighboring Roxbury community.
In recent months the center and the ISB have come under fire from citizens who say the group has espoused a moderate version of Islam for English-speaking audiences while the Arabic materials inside are anything but.
“I visited this mosque one time with my wife,” a former Harvard University professor, Ahmed Mansour, told The New York Sun in an interview. “I found their Arabic materials full of hatred against America. I recognized they were Wahhabis.”
Mr. Mansour is in a position to know. He taught at Harvard’s law school through a program the university established for scholars persecuted in their home countries. In Egypt, Mr. Mansour crossed the country’s Islamic fundamentalists, and he has devoted much of his academic work to the study of radical Islam.
Mr. Mansour is one of 20 Boston community leaders that formed Citizens for Peace and Tolerance, a group challenging the city’s subsidy of the mosque: It sold the land to the ISB for far less than the market value. Its promotional materials say the mosque has received “most of the $22 million” to finance the new mosque from donors in Saudi Arabia.
The disclosure could undermine the Democratic presidential nominee’s argument that he takes a tougher line on the Saudis than the president. This summer, to cheers at the Democratic National Convention in Boston, Mr. Kerry famously said, “I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family.”
Another member of Citizens for Peace and Tolerance, Dennis Hale, a political science professor at Boston College, said he chalks up Mr. Kerry’s early welcome of the mosque to poor staff work.
“I could blame Kerry for many things; I don’t blame him for that. That’s the kind of thing any senator would do, a welcome-to-the-neighborhood sort of thing,” Mr. Hale said. “If he were not running for president and he was a senator, he would look into this more carefully and I would think the Saudi connection would bother him.”
The controversy over the mosque in Boston flared in October 2003,when Mr. Kerry was still an underdog in the Democratic primaries and Governor Dean was surging. The Boston Herald published articles on October 28 and October 29, 2003, disclosing that the ISB’s founders included Abdurrahman Alamoudi, who is now in a federal prison for accepting funds from Libya’s Muammar Gadhafi and raising money for foreign terrorist organizations like Hamas.
Mr. Alamoudi was part of an Islamic delegation invited to the Bush White House in 2002 for an Iftar dinner.
He founded the ISB in 1982 but has not been associated with the organization for several years. The Herald also reported the close ties between the ISB and the Islamic Society of North America, which is being investigated by the Senate Finance Committee for raising money for terrorist organizations. Both groups have the same mailing address on their tax forms.
Boston’s other newspaper, the Globe, wrote an October 15 editorial this year saying that the IBC had changed its ways and its new leadership had promised not to give a forum to radical speakers who espoused anti-Semitism. The mosque recently fired its treasurer, Walid Fitaihi, whose Arabic writings on Jews prompted an outcry from Boston’s Jewish community. The leaders of the mosque this month sent a letter to Mayor Menino disavowing Mr. Fitaihi’s views. Nonetheless, Mr. Fitaihi, who now resides in Saudi Arabia, remains a trustee of the mosque.
A spokesman for Boston’s mayor, Seth Gitell, told the Sun, “These allegations of hate do not represent the community that Mayor Menino knows and the ISP’s letter of last week reinforces that.”
The former communications director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee, Hussein Ibish, said that in his dealings with the ISB he did not believe the mosque was a cover for radical ultra-conservative Islam. “The reading materials that may have come in for free from well-funded right wing foundations don’t necessarily reflect the beliefs of the leadership. I met with two young women who represented the center, who seemed to be very moderate in their religious and political outlook,” he said. Mr. Ibish added that Wahhabi organizations would never allow uncovered women to meet with outside officials.
The Kerry campaign did not respond to calls for comment.
“at least” 6 of the 20 attacks occurred after the FBI closed a counterterrorism investigation or assessment on the individual?
That’s not a great record.
White Males.
Exactly.
Read the comments under the ABC article and you will see someone pushing the claim that, "There has been FAR more domestic terrorism in the US than foreign , even allowing for the massive count of 9/11."
That is demonstrably false. And, the "domestic" terrorism we've had has been from muzzies.
Not the Proud Boys or Sovereign Citizens.
Where’s the CAF of Jeff’s holdings? Harvey’s holdings? Yeah, that’s what I though you POS INJUSTICE DEPT.
From Hammurabi Code through Halakhah, Moses, Sharia, Napoleonic code, Magna Carta, Constitution and Bill of Rights of The United States of America, there has never been a justice system designed to give individuals maximum freedom while dealing with depths of wickedness unseen. Are we Past Peak Civilization?
OUTSTANDING effort FF. Thanks.
We might have to ask other countries for proper justice administration techniques...best practices. We are CLUELESS WITH CRIMINALS COVERING FOR EACH OTHER.
Meanwhile 5 out of every 10 Neo-Nazis and Klan Members gets a W-2 from the FBI....
Or is 'intelligence' only gunning for the enemies of White Liberal Elites In Power - those thugs running the deep state and democrat party?
Are the lists political witch hunts helping one party by exposing their extremest WHILE IGNORING THE EXTREMEST OF THE DEMOCRAT PARTY?
Bet on it.
When Obama called the shots, anything Muslim was taboo. Terrorism didn’t exist. We were no longer in a war on terrorists.
Nothing could get in the way of the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government infrastructure.
The same holds true of Muslim extremists in England leading up to and following the 9/11 attacks in the U.S. Terrorist attacks in GB were financed through public assistance funds paid to the perps. An honest media would highlight these facts as necessary. How many times I have pointed out to my son that the Boston Marathon killings and others are financed by our own tax dollars. Many in the DS are completely comfortable with this fact - and hiding it.
Hey, if the fBI is more interested in surveillance of political party activist and candidates of the Republican party, it clearly doesn’t have the funds or interests to investgat Home Grown terrorists.
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