Boston Globe: Muslims at jihad terror-tied Islamic Society of Boston “reassured” after Boston Marathon jihad massacre
Robert Spencer Apr 17, 2014 at 10:04am journalistic bias, Useful idiots 42 Comments
Above is a video of the “moderate” Imam Suhaib Webb of the Islamic Society of Boston dismissing secularism as a “radical lunatic ideology,” which means that he is dismissing the idea that the government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed, and embracing the idea that the law of Allah constitutes the only legitimate constitution and government. Hardly “moderate.” But you will never read about that in the Boston Globe. On the contrary, the hopelessly clueless and compromised Boston Globe “reporter” Lisa Wangsness wrote an egregious puff piece on him in May 2013, right after the Boston Marathon jihad murders perpetrated by two members of the Islamic Society of Boston. Wangsness is such a paragon of journalistic integrity that in January 2013, when I was scheduled to speak at a conference in the Roman Catholic diocese of Worcester, Massachusetts, she actually exhorted people to call the diocese and ask that my talk be canceled. For that she should have been fired, but advocacy journalism in the cause of obscuring the truth about jihad terror is just fine with the Boston Globe.
And now she greets the first anniversary of the jihad massacre in Boston with this grotesque piece explaining how Muslims in the Boston area were “reassured” after the massacre, as if Muslims had been its victims. She has not written, of course, any piece about how non-Muslims in the Boston area were reassured after the massacre that none of her wonderful “moderate” friends at the Islamic Society of Boston would be involved in any more jihad terror mass murders. No, that simply wouldn’t have been proper. In the mainstream media, Muslims are always the victims, even when they’re the perpetrators.
And as for the Islamic Society of Boston itself, Wangsness airily refers to “a media barrage that turned ugly when USA Today and Fox News suggested the mosque was cultivating extremism.” She does not see fit to tell her hapless readers that the Islamic Society of Boston was founded by al-Qaeda financier Abrurrahman Alamoudi and had the Hitler-admiring Jew-hater Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi on its Board. It has recommended (in accord with Qur’an 4:34) that men beat their wives. Convicted jihadis Tarek Mehanna and Aafia Siddiqui went there. But not to worry: after the Boston Marathon jihad mass murder, the members of the Islamic Society of Boston were “reassured”!
“Inclusive spirit reassures Muslims after bombings,” by Lisa Wangsness, Boston Globe, April 17 (thanks to Dave):
Sept. 11, 2001, ruptured 13-year-old Hamza Syed’s world. Being Muslim instantly became the only part of his identity that seemed to matter; kids at his school in Lynn besieged him with questions he could not answer. He had immigrated to the United States from Pakistan at age 3, but he no longer felt allowed to call himself American.
A year ago, after the Boston Marathon bombings, Syed braced himself for another anti-Muslim backlash. It never happened.
“I grew up being an outsider, feeling like an outsider, and there wasn’t any moment really after the Boston Marathon where I had that feeling of being an outsider again,” he said. “I grieved with everyone. . . . I could understand their feelings, and they could understand mine, without there being an asterisk next to it.”
On Monday, Syed expects to run the Boston Marathon for the first time, an act he sees as an expression of his love for his resilient city and for its embrace of diversity.
“That is what the Boston Marathon this year is really going to be about,” he said. “I want to say that I was there, that I took part in it.”
To be sure, there were isolated displays of Islamophobia in the aftermath of the Marathon bombings. A woman wearing a hijab was assaulted on a street in Malden. Strangers sent hateful e-mails to Boston’s mosques. Some Muslims feared being questioned by law enforcement or seethed over a tabloid’s portrayal of two innocent Massachusetts men as possibly connected to the bombings.
But the broader tableau showed a city that has become more welcoming of Muslims in the years since the 2001 attacks, many local Muslims said. The scale of the two tragedies was very different, but many Muslims said improved interfaith cooperation and increasingly diverse schools and workplaces contributed to a change in tone. It also seemed, they said, that their non-Muslim neighbors had grown more knowledgeable and less fearful in a dozen years of discussing terrorism, war, national security, and religious liberty in the public square.
“Now, when an act of terror occurs, people can see it for what it is: someone exploiting religion, someone with serious issues,” said Jalon Fowler, a 38-year-old Muslim who ran in last year’s Marathon and will compete again this year.
After the Marathon bombings, many Muslims said they felt reassured by gestures of support and concern from friends and coworkers, from local politicians and clergy of other faiths. Bostonians, they said, seemed to understand that most Muslims were as horrified at the violence on Boylston Street as everyone else was.
“There is never a silver lining to mass murder, or attempted mass murder,” said Imam William Suhaib Webb, spiritual leader of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center in Roxbury, the city’s largest mosque. “But what we learned is, this is a really great city with incredibly sincere people.
“It was like, we’re together, we all anguish about what happened, and we are going to try to speak to the problem together.”
Mosque fears eased
Greater Boston’s two most prominent mosques were inundated with press calls and television cameras after the bombings, especially the Islamic Society of Boston in Cambridge, where suspects Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev occasionally worshipped.
Ismail Fenni, acting imam of the Cambridge mosque, tried to field reporters’ questions and to respond to the stunned congregation, few of whom had known the Tsarnaevs.
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In eleven-plus years of Jihad Watch, I’ve never come across a story where leaders of a mosque said about an Islamic jihadist, “Yes, we knew him well, he used to come here all the time.” Instead, no one at the mosque ever knew the guy or laid eyes on him. In reality, you may recall that not long after the Boston Marathon jihad bombings, much was made of the fact that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had been thrown out of his mosque. That story was widely reported in a way that gave the impression that Tsarnaev had been expelled for his “extremism,” when in fact he just had a dispute with an imam, was thrown out once, and came right back not long afterward. But no one when that story was reported said, “We didn’t even know this guy, he hardly ever came here.” On the contrary, “the Islamic Society issued a statement to say that while the suspects were known to other worshipers, they could not have predicted their horrific bombing of the Boston marathon.” They saved the claim that few there knew the Tsarnaevs for the ever-credulous Lisa Wangsness.
“We were worried the name and the reputation of the mosque would be stained,” Fenni said in a recent interview.
“What we learned is, this is a really great city with incredibly sincere people,” said Imam William Suhaib Webb, of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center.
Those fears eased as neighbors lent support in calls and e-mails. A couple of weeks after the tragedy, the mayor of Cambridge and other officials led a peace walk from City Hall to the mosque.
The Roxbury mosque was also caught up in a media barrage that turned ugly when USA Today and Fox News suggested the mosque was cultivating extremism.
But, here too, the community offered a balm: Neighbors sent notes. Felix G. Arroyo, then councilor at large, spoke at the mosque’s vigil for bombing victims. Messages of support from Jewish and Christian clergy poured in….
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Yes, yes, but what if…what if the mosque is really “cultivating extremism”? That is a question that is beneath the notice of enlightened “journalists” such as Lisa Wangsness. Go back to sleep.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/2014/04/boston-globe-muslims-at-jihad-terror-tied-islamic-society-of-boston-reassured-after-boston-marathon-jihad-massacre
