Dzhokar Tsarnaev, who has been arrested for the terrorist bombings in Boston, attended the Islamic Society of Boston (ISB) in Cambridge, a mosque with strong Muslim Brotherhood links. The ISB Cultural Center, which is at a separate location, is even run by a group that federal prosecutors said in 2008 “was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.”
An ISB attendee reports last seeing Tsarnaev there during Ramadan last year. It is unclear if his brother, the other bomber, also attended the mosque. The ISB has links to the Muslim Brotherhood, has had radical leadership and promotes anti-Western themes.
For instance, the Islamic Society of Boston recently invited journalist Victoria Brittain to speak at the mosque, who in an article she wrote on MichaelMoore.com wrote that the War on Terror is a “war on Islam” and that Muslims in the West face widespread persecution. In her article, Brittain also criticized British security services who “returned to a post-9/11 stance on overdrive” in the aftermath of the 2005 London subway bombings, referred to as the “7/7″ attacks.
ISB teaching is largely based on Islamists like Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi and Sayyid Qutb, the Brotherhood cleric who influenced Osama Bin Laden. It was reported in 2008 that the Muslim Brotherhood and the Pakistani Islamist group, Jamaat-e-Islami, “are the prominent belief systems. The popular websites used by members, and recommended by mosque leaders, are mostly fundamentalist, and rabidly homophobic.”
One of the founders of the ISB is Abdurrahman Alamoudi. He was convicted on terrorism-related charges in 2004 and has admitted to being a secret Muslim Brotherhood operative. He wrote from his prison cell, “I am, I hope, still a member of the Muslim Brotherhood organization in the USA.”
He was last paid a speaking fee by ISB in 2000, the same year he publicly expressed his support for Hamas and Hezbollah.
Muslim Brotherhood spiritual leader Yousef al-Qaradawi has been on the ISB board of trustees. Tax filings for 1998-2000 include his name under a list of “officers, directors, trustees and key employees.” In 2002, he helped ISB fundraise via videotape because the U.S. wouldn’t grant him entry. His name also appeared on the ISB website until March 2001. The ISB originally denied having any connection to Qaradawi and later claimed that the inclusion of his name on the tax forms was an error.
The ISB has hosted Islamist speakers like Salah Soltan and Yasir Qadhi. It has donated “thousands” of dollars to the Holy Land Foundation, a U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entity later shut down for financing Hamas. It also donated to Benevolence International Foundation, later identified as an Al-Qaeda front.
Imam Sheikh Basyouny Nehela, who has served ISB for at least ten years, is a board member of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American Society. Federal prosecutors said in 2008 that “MAS was founded as the overt arm of the Muslim Brotherhood in America.” In January 2012, Alamoudi frankly testified, “Everyone knows that MAS is the Muslim Brotherhood.”
Osama Kandil, who has served as chairman of the ISB board, is one of nine founders of the Muslim Arab Youth Association. He has also been a vice president of the group. A 1991 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood memo identifies it as one of its fronts. The government labeled it an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Trial, listing it among U.S. Muslim Brotherhood entities.
Walid Fitaihi is another ISB trustee. He resigned after anti-Semitic writings he made in Arabic came to light. He said that Jews “perpetrated the worst of evils and brought the worst corruption to the earth,” are the “murderers of prophets” and “would be punished for their oppression, murder and rape of the worshippers of Allah.” He also claimed that the “Zionist lobby in America…has recruited many of the influential media.”
He returned as a trustee after the Muslim American Society’s Boston chapter took over the ISB Cultural Center. Hossam al-Jabri, the president of the Boston chapter of the Muslim American Society when it took over the Cultural Center, donated to the Holy Land Foundation.
Jamal Badawi has been another ISB trustee. He is an unindicted co-conspirator in the Holy Land Foundation trial because he was one of its fundraisers. In 2010, he endorsed “combative jihad.” He has also justified suicide bombings and refers to Hamas terrorists as “martyrs.” His name is in a 1992 U.S. Muslim Brotherhood directory and is a founder of the Muslim American Society.
The Islamic Society of Boston filed a defamation lawsuit in 2005 against reporters and terrorism experts that pointed out facts like these and accused them of having “anti-Muslim biases.” The lawsuit was dropped in 2007, but that doesn’t stop the mosque from saying that its critics are part of an anti-Muslim network.
The imam of the ISB Cultural Center, Suhaib Webb, made a public statement condemning the Boston bombing but he also tried to preempt any examination of the connection between the mosque’s history of Islamist connections and the Boston bomber by saying: “This will open the door to the Islamophobic industry, an industry of ill-educated bigots, to attack Muslim communities.”
