Boston mayor tried to help local black muslims build a mosque, wound up with Saudi terrorist mosque

Boston Jewish Advocate
“Menino’s Mosque”
By Charles Jacobs
November 23, 2008

This was the title of the Boston Phoenix’s lead story last week, featuring on the cover an image of Mayor Menino serving up a new mosque on a silver platter to -- the story argues – exactly the wrong people.

The Phoenix report is the first public account of how a well intentioned Mayor tried to help local African-American Muslims in Roxbury build a mosque, but wound up subsidizing what many in Boston worry is a Saudi-funded and controlled center with connections to radical Islam -- a mile from downtown.

Phoenix reporter David Bernstein sketches a complex tale of good intentions gone awry. At the center of Bernstein’s account is Muhammad Ali-Salaam, who played a double role: as promoter and fundraiser for the mosque, while being paid as a city official to guard Boston’s interests.

Twenty years ago, Bernstein says, the Muslim Co
uncil of Boston (MCB), a consortium of Sunni congregations in Roxbury, proposed to build a mosque on land held by the Boston Redevelopment Authority (BRA). Mayor Ray Flynn was supportive. He had worked as a probation officer years before and came to know people at Roxbury’sIntervale Street mosque who he thought “could do good for their community.”

But in 1996, when it became clear that the MCB could not raise enough money, the BRA’s Ali-Salaam put forward another group – the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) -- as the designated developers and helped the ISB get the $2 million dollar parcel for $175K.

Did the BRA ever vet the ISB? Bernstein describes ISB members as “largely of Saudi Arabian heritage.” Simple due diligence would have found that Yusef al Quaradawi, then a registered ISB Trustee, called for the killing of Jews and homosexuals, that the ISB’s website featured instructions on wife-beating, and that ISB Trustee Walid Fitahi called Jews the "murderers of prophets.” Today, the ISB’s founder is in prison as an al-Queda money runner. Even the BRA should know that a mosque that gets millions from the Saudis is unlikely to be an enthusiastic promoter of moderate Islam.

Now, Bernstein says, the Mayor hides from the issue in a “zone of silence,” and doesn’t show up at mosque events. The BRA, which is being sued to open its public records, seems to want the silence permanent: BRA officials recently told the judge that all relevant e-mails have disappeared.

At the height of the controversy over the leadership of the mosque, the ISB claimed that it had cleansed itself of objectionable characters. Fitahi actually resigned from the ISB board. But now, Bernstein tells us, Fitahi is back.

And Bernstein reports that the ISB recently turned the mosque over to the Muslim American Society (MAS). This is a group thought by some to be the American branch of the Muslim Brotherhood. The Brotherhood, founded in Egypt in 1928, sparked and now may guide the anti-West jihad.

Has the BRA put the mayor in an untenable position? Has the time come for a FinCom investigation of the BRA/ISB/MAS deal?

JPost.com - In the Trenches: A window into Israel's soul

Posted by David Harris
November 24, 2008

If all we knew about Israel came from the media, which seems to have an aversion to upbeat stories, how would the country be portrayed? Images of war, conflict, corruption, and domestic fault lines would dominate.

And if all we knew about Israel came from international organizations, which make a habit of singling it out for vilification - especially each November, when Israel's very creation becomes an annual target for its enemies at the UN - what would we see? A nonstop litany of accusations of every conceivable evil known to humankind. (read full article)

JPost.com - Our World: Time for the real Bush to stand up

Nov 24, 2008 20:50 Updated Nov 25, 2008 11:33
By CAROLINE GLICK

US President George W. Bush has six weeks left in power. If he acts fast, that may be enough time to secure his place in history - at least in terms of the Middle East.

Bush's initial reactions to the Sept. 11 attacks were a rare display of political and intellectual courage. Gazing at the rubble of the World Trade Center, Bush recognized that the primary failure of US policy towards the Arab and Islamic world until that day was found in the predisposition of his predecessors to slavishly maintain a Faustian bargain with tyrannical Arab regimes in the interest of maintaining "stability." That bargain committed the US to providing military assistance and political backing to authoritarian regimes throughout the Arab and Islamic world in exchange for cheap oil for the West. (read full article)

The Saudi Peace Initiative: "Auschwitz Borders"

November 18, 2008 Eli E. Hertz

What Arab countries failed to achieve by use of force during the past 60 years, they hope to achieve by this renewed Saudi 'Peace Initiative':

Israel to withdraw to the non-secure borders that existed prior to the 1967 Six-Day War, borders that invited aggression - frontiers that the eloquent former Israeli diplomat, the late Abba Eban, branded "Auschwitz borders."

Illegal Arab aggression against the territorial integrity and political independence of Israel in 1948, 1967, and 1973 cannot and should not be rewarded. Arab attempts to 'roll back the clock' as if nothing happened, are a baseless ploy designed to use the 'Peace Initiative' as leverage to bring about a greater Israeli withdrawal from parts of Judie and Samaria [western Palestine] and to gain a broader base from which to continue to attack Israel.

Furthermore, Saudi Arabian King Saud ibn Abdul Aziz had stated in 1954 - before the 1967 Six-Day War and before the 'Occupation': "The Arab nations should sacrifice up to 10 million of their 50 million people, if necessary, to wipe out Israel ... Israel to the Arab world is like a cancer to the human body, and the only way of remedy is to uproot it, just like a cancer."

Saudi Arabia is one of the worst offenders of civil, religious, and political rights having a 'judicial' system that sanctions stoning individuals to death for adultery, beheading criminals with a sword, and amputation for theft, including cross-amputations of a right arm and a left leg that leave offenders horribly disabled for life.

Freedom House, a non-sectarian organization that was founded by Eleanor Roosevelt to monitor civil rights around the world, stated in its 2008 survey that Saudi Arabia is "Not [a] Free" country. Political rights and civil liberties are absent or virtually nonexistent, and people experience severely restricted rights of expression and association - all as a result of the extremely oppressive nature of the regime.

Professor, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, past President of the International Court of Justice (I.C.J.) made it clear: "No legal right shall spring from a wrong" and this principle of law applies to Saudi Arabia as well.

Why would anyone make a deal with this kind of regime?

Dagen Magazinet - Norway finances Israel-hate

(Norwegian daily), Oct. 23, 2008

The director of Palestinian Media Watch, Itamar Marcus, met Wednesday with members of Parliament of the Christian Democratic Party and the Progress Party to whom he presented a new, detailed and sensational report about how Norwegian money is spent on the official hate propaganda against Israel. With example after example Marcus documents how Fatah and Hamas use children's TV to spread anti-Israeli hate propaganda, to glorify suicide bombers and to encourage children to follow in the footsteps of the terrorists in order to "liberate" the "occupied" Palestine. (read full article)

Jpost - Ther perils ahead

Nov 14, 2008 18:22 Updated Nov 14, 2008 18:26
By CAROLINE GLICK

US President-elect Barack Obama has properly sought to maintain a low profile in foreign affairs in this transition period ahead of his January inauguration. But while Obama has stipulated that the US can have only one president at a time, his aides and advisers are signaling that he intends to move US foreign policy in a sharply different direction from its current trajectory once he assumes office.

And they are signaling that this new direction will be applied most immediately and directly to US policy toward the Middle East. (read full article)

Palestinian Columnist: Muslims Are Harming Christian Culture - Memri.org

November 12, 2008

In his column in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam, 'Abd Al-Nasser Al-Najjar criticized the persecution of Christians in Arab countries, with a particular emphasis on the Christian population of the Palestinian Authority. [1]

Following are excerpts from the article:
"In Iraq, a crime is currently being committed - another in a series of iniquities brought by the winds of change that came in the wake of the [U.S.] occupation, which sought to impregnate Iraq with the seed of democracy. [But] the [resulting] fetus emerged deformed and weird. The worst outcome of this situation is, possibly, the carnage against ethnic communities and minorities that has swept through Iraq. Neither Sunnis, nor Shi'ites, nor Christians, nor Kurds, nor Turkmen, nor [members of] other [groups] have managed to escape it. (read full article)