A battle over the proposed expansion of a mosque whose imam allegedly supports the terrorist group Hamas is brewing in Middletown, New Jersey, where one local activist/analyst is leading the charge to raise awareness of these allegations.
The Middletown Township Planning Board meeting date coincided with the unrelated filing of a federal lawsuit against the New York Police Department by Muslim Advocates, a national group seeking to end the controversial surveillance of New Jersey Muslims by New York City investigators.
The topic of terrorism is particularly sensitive in Middletown, a New York metropolitan-area suburb that lost thirty-seven residents who were working in New York City on 9/11.
Ryan Mauro, a national security analyst and fellow with RadicalIslam.org, says Sheikh Reda Shata, imam of the Islamic Society of Monmouth County (ISMC), is a Hamas supporter who has been identified in an NYPD investigation as a “Tier One Person of Interest.”
Mauro has said that persons qualify for that designation when they have a “threat potential based on their position at a particular location, links to an organization, overseas links and/or criminal history.”
He did not get a chance to speak for long at the meeting on June 6, but has since distributed a “fact sheet” on the matter in addition to posting several articles about his campaign online.
Mauro erroneously stood to speak during the commission’s question and answer segment specific to ISMC’s pending application, eliciting a hostile response from one board member.
At this stage of the hearing, public input was to be limited to posing questions to Mohammad Mosaad, ISMC vice president, who had just provided testimony on the project proposal. The center is seeking a conditional use permit and preliminary and final major site approval for proposed community center and parking lot on its existing Middletown property.
However, rather than immediately telling Mauro to wait until the public comments segment at the end of the meeting, Board Member Carl Rathjen shouted him down for failing to follow board procedures. After Mauro stated for the record his affiliation with RadicalIslam.org and the Clarion Fund, Rathjen raised his voice and said, “It is not at all germane to this proceeding… You may stand down!”
Several people from the nearly 100 person in attendance—many of whom were Mauro supporters—booed Rathjen for his handling of his procedural misstep, with one audience member shouting back “You don’t have to be nasty!”
“The way Carl Rathjen flew off the handle was an embarrassment for the town,” Mauro later said in an interview with TRR. “He could have told me nicely that there is another time where I can make a statement and I would have said ‘thank you’ and sat down.”
“Rathjen’s outburst shows he is hostile to any incriminating information about this mosque’s leadership,” Mauro continued. “When I said my information concerns the community, Rathjen said, ‘I disagree with you factually.’ He’s already decided that I’m wrong before even hearing the facts I wanted to present.”
Mauro’s group RadicalIslam.org calls itself the “flagship education tool” of the Clarion Fund, which is “an independently-funded, non-profit organization 501(c)(3) that produces and distributes documentaries on the threats of Radical Islam.”
Raphael Shore, a Canadian-Israeli film director, founded Clarion in 2006. The group produced The Third Jihad: Radical Islam’s Vision for America, a documentary for which NYPD initially denied, but later came under fire for, showing as a training video to about a thousand officers.
Mauro has embarked upon a campaign to raise awareness of Shata’s vocal support of Hamas as well as Shata’s affiliation with a Brooklyn mosque that, under his leadership, hosted suspected North American Hamas leader Mohammed El-Mazin.
Shata expressed “shock and dismay” back in October in response to initial reports that an NYPD intelligence squad has had him under surveillance. He had said in a statement that such police operations “are based on unfounded suspicion and religious profiling” and represent a “mismanagement of dearly-needed counter-terrorism resources.”
Shata likewise reiterated “his often-stated condemnation of terrorism, incitement and prejudice, while noting that he has “long considered himself a partner with federal and local law enforcement authorities.”
He also vowed to “continue to go out of his way to maintain all necessary communication and cooperation to facilitate their duties in service of the local community, in order to fulfill his religious obligations as a Muslim, his duties as a United States citizen, and his additional responsibility as a prominent community figure.”
Mauro expressed concerned with how some media outlets have characterized his attempt to bring attention to Shata’s well-documented support of Hamas—support that allegedly includes statements praising suicide attacks against Israeli soldiers. Mauro made clear, however, the distinction between truly moderate Muslims and extremist Islamists.