Amid protests, controversial Boston mosque opens

The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center, a project so controversial it spawned two lawsuits and chilled relations between Boston’s Jews and Muslims, opened over the weekend with two days of festivities. The opening drew participation from Boston’s mayor and a video message from the Massachusetts governor, while the first Muslim in Congress, Keith Ellison (who has also had run-ins with Jewish leaders, is slated to headline a benefit. 

Most of the Boston Jewish leadership stayed away though (two Hebrew College officials were an exception) and Charles Jacobs, the former director of the David Project and a longtime Jewish activist, staged a protest across the street.

Michael Paulson reports in the Boston Globe:

I tried to talk to a few of the protesters, but they said they had been instructed not to speak to the media, but rather to defer all questions to Charles Jacobs, who has been the mosque’s leading critic. Jacobs was critical of the flower gesture, saying, “they just want to surround me and give me flowers – they don’t want to talk to me,’’ and he urged reporters to focus on what he says has been problematic funding of the mosque by Saudi donors, and problematic literature in mosque-related facilities, such as instructions for wife-beating that were once posted on the website of the mosque in Cambridge, which, like the Roxbury mosque, is owned by the Islamic Society of Boston.

One supporter of the mosque pointed out to me that, although the vast majority of Boston’s Jewish leadership has boycotted today’s events, it seems likely that there were actually more Jews celebrating with the mosque supporters than protesting them – the breakfast’s honorary chairs included two Hebrew College officials as well as the head of the Workmen’s Circle, and the attendees included some young Jewish activists. One of the Jewish participants in the interfaith breakfast inaugurating the mosque, Enid Shapiro, e-mailed me to say, "The breakfast was quite extraordinary although I was very disappointed that representatives of the established Jewish Community (CJP) were not represented. The demonstration outside the Reggie Lewis Center was appalling and certainly did not represent me or in my mind the Jewish Community." Later, at the ribbon cutting, I ran into Rabbi Moshe Waldoks, who told me he saw around six local rabbis joining the celebration. “For those in the Jewish community who have been involved in dialogue with the Muslim community, we celebrate what our cousins are doing by establishing this symbol in the community for many years to come.”

Paulson’s full report on the opening is here.