Mosque Meltdown .... the Islamic Society of Boston remains beleaguered.

WHEN WE LAST LOOKED at the Islamic Society of Boston's (ISB) efforts to build a mega-mosque in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury, the project was beleaguered. Insufficiently funded and riddled with negative media coverage, the ISB lashed out by filing suit against more than a dozen Boston area residents that it blamed for hostile press clippings. It further claimed that the negative press was the result of a tortious conspiracy hatched by the defendants, and that the scheme had succeeded by making the ISB's fundraising hopelessly difficult.

Meanwhile, another lawsuit was launched almost simultaneously. This one, filed by Boston resident John Policastro, claimed that the City of Boston had shown unconstitutional favoritism to the ISB by giving it a piece of land valued at over $400,000 at a discount of roughly 50 percent.

At the time of our last piece on the matter, I labeled the ISB's suit contemptible and frivolous. So it remains.

I also stated that the Policastro case had great potential. To date, the Policastro suit has lived up to its promise, bringing to light some rather curious actions undertaken by the City of Boston.

Even though the ISB's original suit named well over a dozen defendants, one of the suit's curiosities pertains to a party whose name was noticeably absent--Ahmed Mansour.

Ahmed Mansour is a moderate Muslim cleric. Mansour sought refuge in America when a Wahabbist fatwa calling for his assassination forced him to flee his native Egypt. After being granted asylum by After being granted asylum by

the U.S. government and moving to Boston, Mansour began visiting the ISB and was appalled by what he saw. In particular, the ISB's willingness to seek and receive the favor of controversial cleric Yussuf al-Qaradawi outraged Mansour.

Time to put this up:

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There is a book,:

Unholy Alliance : Radical Islam and the American Left (Hardcover)

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And a review:

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Communism is dead. Long live Islam!, September 30, 2004

Reviewer:

Kevin Beckman (Sacramento, CA) - See all my reviews

It sounds absurd: why would Leftists make common cause with a religion that is diametrically opposed to everything the Left stands for? David Horowitz explains that it is really quite logical given the Left's first principle: America is evil and anything or anyone opposed to America is good.

Part I of the book is a brief history of 9/11 through the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and the Left's behavior during this time. Horowitz includes the reaction of Katha Pollitt of The Nation magazine: "The flag stands for vengeance, and jingoism, and war." Anthropology Professor Nicholas De Genova of Columbia University said he hoped for "a million Mogadishus." His colleagues objected, not to the despicable sentiment, but because of the bad publicity it brought their "teach-in." Our tax dollars at work!

Part II is the heart of the book: a history of the American and international Left. Horowitz calls them Neo-Communists or Neocoms. The Neocoms of old believed in the Soviet Union the way religious people believe in God. Those who spied for the USSR didn't see themselves as traitors to their country, but rather loyalists to humanity and an ideal of America that's never existed. When the Soviet Union fell, a few of them stopped for some introspection but most pressed on as if nothing happened. Communist historian Eric Hobsbawm put it nicely: "Without the Revolution, my life and my work are meaningless."

Now that they no longer have to defend an indefensible regime, modern Neocoms are simply nihilists. They know what they oppose but they have no plans for the aftermath of the revolution which they still believe will happen. They don't know what they want, but they know what they hate: the United States, capitalism personified.

So why are they allying with radical Islam? Horowitz says that the Neocoms still believe in Marx's dictum that "religion is the opiate of the masses." Once private property is abolished, the need for religion will vanish, and Islamic radicals will stop being Islamic and radical. The only thing standing in the way is the United States.

Sound insane? It is. They are. I highly recommend this book. Horowitz makes the insanity understandable.

From Frontpage Magazine:

Esposito: Apologist for Militant Islam

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Since the attacks of last fall, Americans’ thirst for knowledge has increased exponentially on subjects germane to Islam and the Middle East. Naturally, many people have turned to this country’s professors and academic specialists for information through books, articles, lectures and interviews. But who exactly are they turning to? Specifically, who is the most authoritative voice among American academics?

Many would point to the famous professor of Islam at Georgetown University, John Esposito. A former president for the Middle East Studies Association (MESA), he now heads the Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown. Author of several popular books on Islam, he was also editor of the prestigious Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern Islamic World .

So, what does academia’s go-to man say about contemporary Islamic movements?

Come Again?

In one of the more memorable lines of early 2001, Esposito suggested that “focusing on Usama bin Laden risks catapulting one of the many sources of terrorism to center stage, distorting both the diverse international sources and the relevance of one man.”

This was probably not the only sentence he wishes he could retract. Here are a few more:

The 1990s, he said, would “be a decade of new alliances and alignments in which the Islamic movements will challenge rather than threaten their societies and the West.”

In 1994, he supported the notion that Hamas, the suicide-bombing Palestinian terror group, is also a community-focused group that engages in “honey, cheese-making, and home-based clothing manufacture.”

Esposito also claimed on NPR that Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasir Arafat’s call for Jihad is comparable to a “literacy campaign” or the “fight against AIDS.”

Clearly, Esposito accepts a rose-colored version of militant Islam that has little connection to reality. But rather than damaging his reputation, this approach has served him surprisingly well in both academic circles as well as government. Indeed, he was a leading source of information on Islamic movements for the Department of State during the Clinton years.

Unwavering

While the government no longer consistently seeks his advice, Esposito continues to dispense it elsewhere. Lately, he’s appeared on television in defense of Sami al-Arian, the University of South Florida professor with links to the Palestinian Islamic Jihad. In fact, he has supported al-Arian since the mid-1990s, casting him as a “consummate professional” rather than a supporter of Palestinian terror.

In recent weeks, Esposito has also thrown his weight behind a University of North Carolina requirement for all freshmen to read parts of the Koran, but that failed to address the parts that justify violence.

While Esposito has emerged as one of the foremost apologists for Islamism in recent years, at least he is consistent. His message has been unwavering — before and after the attacks of last fall.

In fact, rather than admitting error for his own failed judgements, Esposito actually blamed America in the aftermath of the attacks. “September 11,” he said, “has made everyone aware of the fact that not addressing the kinds of issues involved here, of tolerance and pluralism, have catastrophic repercussions.”

Understating the Dangers

What Esposito has clearly missed, however, is the catastrophic repercussions of militant Islam. Indeed, a clear pattern has emerged.

In 1979, Iranian militants took 54 American hostages for more than a year. In 1983, militants blew up the U.S. embassy in Beirut. In 1996, they bombed the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, killing 19 American servicemen. In 2000, radicals killed 17 U.S. soldiers on the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen. The list goes on.

Esposito, all the while, insists that equating Islamist movements “with radicalism and terrorism becomes a convenient pretext for crushing political opposition.”

Esposito also minimizes the damage that Shari’a, or Islamic law, has done in the countries that have implemented it – including Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Sudan. Freedom House, a watchdog group, ranks all of these countries as the worst offenders of human rights in the world. Their economies are all on the brink of destruction, and each one is undeniably linked to the export of international terrorism.

Still, Esposito writes that "contrary to what some have advised, the United States should not in principle object to implementation of Islamic law or involvement of Islamic activists in government."

Esposito in Context

Esposito’s record makes better sense with the understanding that he truly believes that one man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. He claims that the “line between national liberation and terrorism is often blurred.” Actually, he blurs it.

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