Rabbi Michael Leo Samuel

*picture of Aafia Siddiqui, a well-known Muslim terrorist who graduated MIT.

In a USA Today article that appeared today, a columnist pointed out several disturbing facts about the Islamic Society of Boston that are alarming.

The founders of this mosque were members of the Muslim Brotherhood, a well-known terrorist group that assassinated Anwar Sadat in 1981. One of its founding members, “Abdurahman Alamoudi, pled guilty in 2004 for conducting illegal transactions with the Libyan government and his partial role in a conspiracy to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah.”

One Muslim moderate and critic of the Boston mosque named Sheikh Ahmed Mansour expressed concern about the kind of rhetoric he heard at the mosque. He observed, “Their writings and teachings were fanatical. I left and refused to go back to pray. I left Egypt to escape the Muslim Brotherhood, but I had found it there.” We should take Sheikh Mansour seriously. His credentials are impeccable; he has served Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) board and has served as a visiting fellow at the Harvard Law School. He knows the modus operandi of Radical Islam well; he witnessed their activity in his native homeland-Egypt.

Mansur went on to say that the imam’s fiery sermons could spur impressionable young men to commit acts of violence, even if the speaker doesn’t explicitly advocate it, “These terrorists who kill are victimized by the sheikhs So the criminal are the sheikhs ” he said. “This mosque continues to increase fanaticism among Muslims.” Mansur is a brave soul who is risking life and limb to honor his truth.

As a leader in the Jewish community, if we had a similar problem regarding rabbis inciting young impressionable men to commit acts of violence against anyone—Christian or Muslim—you can be sure the Jewish community would be on top of this problem without a moment’s hesitation. Yet, when it pertains to the Muslim community, we allow political correctness to serve as blinders, because we cannot imagine that such intense hatred for the non-Muslim Other exists in a place of worship.

The Islamic Society of Boston has a long history is encouraging and supporting radical Islamicists who have gone to great extremes to promote their political and religious agenda. The article gives many examples:

• In March 2010, Imam Abdullah Faarooq gave a sermon praising Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT graduate who had returned to her native Pakistan in 2003 and was later exposed as courier and financier for Al Qaeda. She was eventually arrested in Afghanistan with containers of sodium cyanide and notes on making a bomb. In his sermon, Faarooq proclaimed Siddiqui’s innocence and told worshippers, “You must grab on to this rope, grab on to the typewriter, grab on to the shovel, grab on to the gun and the sword, don’t be afraid to step out into this world and do your job.”
• Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, an original trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston and known as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the past, he has told followers in sermons that Jews and homosexuals should be “exterminated.” (see also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QaoKv1zRkjA regarding how the prophet Mohammed “cursed homosexuals”) The Anti-Defamation League has referred to him as a “Theologian of Terror,” and he once wrote in an Arabic newspaper editorial that Jews are “the Rapists of worshipers of Allah.”
• Tariq Mehanna and Ahmed Abousamra were mosque members who, in 2009, were indicted by federal prosecutors for providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill in a foreign country.
• Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston Abdul-Badi Abousamra, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna’s co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.
• Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.[1]

Can the American Muslim community honestly say that they have no blame whatsoever in this terrible crime that killed several Americans and maimed over 180 people?

Again, if the terrorists had been Jews, wouldn’t the Jewish community show at least a modicum of introspection about the behavior of its citizens—especially if we had reason to think that rabbinical leadership might have played a role in an attack against innocents?

You know the answer to that question. Yet, we will look the other way when it comes to a number of Muslim imams (but not all) who continue to sow the seeds of hatred and discord in their mosques. If Muslims seriously want Americans to believe that their religion is a “religion of peace,” then they need to walk their talk and take an active stand against the religious thugs who dwell in their midst. We need to encourage respectful and law-abiding Muslim leaders to police their own communities. We do not need the government to do this job for us.

Responsible Muslims hold the key in alerting our country’s leaders of the radicals who are doing everything in their power to radicalize their youth to commit unspeakable crimes against humanity.

Notes:

[1] The sources mentioned in this blog column come from Oren Dorell’s article, “Mosque that Boston suspects attended has radical ties” USA TODAY, April 25, 2013.