Massachusetts treasurer and independent candidate for governor Tim Cahill was off base when he accused incumbent governor Deval Patrick of “playing politics with terrorism” in the wake of Patrick’s visit to the controversial Roxbury mosque maintained by the Islamic Society of Boston.
It is the Phoenix‘s view that Cahill would have been closer to the mark if he had suggested that the governor was compromising his long-standing support for gay and lesbian rights, as well as his commitment to equal opportunity for women, by meeting with an imam dedicated to the international spread of Sharia law, the letter of which holds that homosexuals should be executed and women subject to discipline by their husbands.
The Muslim leader in question, Imam Abdullah Faaruuq, a native-born American who studied at the University of Massachusetts, is more moderate than previous leaders associated with the Roxbury mosque. And this is a good thing.
But Faaruuq’s moderation is relative. He is not exactly the sort of religious leader likely to be active in AIDS Action or working for marriage equality.
Truth be told, Faaruuq’s theological positions appear to be closer to those of Archbishop Sean Patrick Cardinal O’Malley, a staunch advocate of social justice who nevertheless opposes abortion and same-sex marriage as well as the ordination of women.
In institutions as fundamentally conservative as Islam, the Roman Catholic Church, or the national Republican Party, a moderate may turn out to be very conservative indeed. Or, to put it more bluntly, Faaruuq, for all his commitment to economic equality, is by dint of his social positions a reactionary — at least by the standards of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, of which Patrick is the titular leader.
So what was Patrick thinking? Votes and campaign contributions were no doubt on his mind. As governor, he is also chief executive of all Bay Staters: atheists, Christians, Jews, Hindus, Rastafarians, Mormons, Christian Scientists, Muslims, and more. Three cheers for the big tent. Inclusivity is a hallmark of Patrick’s newly revived brand.
To say that the location of the meeting was unfortunate would be to revel in understatement. Patrick is too shrewd a politician not to grasp the power of symbols. And the mosque at the intersection of Tremont Street and Malcolm X Boulevard, while a mere two years old, bristles with back-story.
As an in-depth 2008 investigation by Phoenix political writer David S. Bernstein showed, over the years, much about the mosque was not what it appeared to be:
* Its sale, well below market value, was superintended by a BRA staffer with a stake in the outcome.
* It was financed — to the surprise of Boston City Hall — largely with Saudi money.
* Grassroots local Muslims were supplanted by more suburban-based foreign-born co-religionists of the Islamic Society of Boston who were politically more radical and theologically more conservative.
* The ISB had disturbing overlap with the Muslim American Society, which was the spawn of the Muslim Brotherhood, the Egyptian-based anti-American, anti-Israel, and anti-Semitic terrorists who promote violent holy war.
* Board members and funders either were slow or failed to distance themselves from colleagues with questionable associations and anti-Semitic ideologies.
* To top it all off, the ISB filed libel charges against the Boston Herald, Fox News, and activist Charles Jacobs, only to drop its case when the discovery process was becoming too uncomfortable — but not before a chill on other media coverage set in.
This is — or should be — eyebrow-raising stuff. If Patrick, or his staff, were unaware, they deserve a figurative black eye. If Republican gubernatorial candidate Charlie Baker met with a group — say, a band of Tea Partiers — in a church or community center tainted by ties to right-wing nationalists, the Democrats and the press would pillory him.
The Phoenix does not object to the purpose of the meeting, which, according to the Boston Globe, was intended to get Muslims more involved in politics, to repudiate extremism, and to help the larger community transcend negative stereotypes about Islam. The repudiation of extremism, however, seems to have taken a second seat to Patrick’s feel-good electioneering.
Estimates of the Massachusetts Muslim population hover at 70,000. That about 1100 from 25 institutions, including 15 mosques, attended is impressive. Patrick was right to decry the prejudice that may cost Muslims jobs, or the racial profiling that may subject some to police and citizen harassment. But he was wrong to ignore the fact that within the larger assembly of good intentions there exist small, potent, and deadly cadres who show nothing but resolve and promise to continue their acts of terrorism.
When an ecumenical rainbow coalition of religious leaders predictably assembled on the steps of the mosque to denounce Cahill for even raising the subject of terrorism, its was only two weeks after a pair of Massachusetts men, both Muslims, were arrested in a raid following the Times Square car bombing in New York. The clerics seem to be in denial about terror being a legitimate subject for political debate. And Patrick’s visit to the mosque was nothing if not political.
We wonder if the irony of the situation ever crossed the minds of the interfaith participants. There they were, standing in good conscience on the steps of a mosque built primarily with money from Saudi Arabia testifying to the right of Muslims to worship in America. Meanwhile, in Saudi Arabia, Buddhists and Quakers, Christians and Jews, and all others who don’t subscribe to Islam, are prevented from publically practicing their faith.
Not to recognize this is to engage in a sort of Mickey Mouse multiculturalism that captivates the hard left and dominates elite university campuses, but which should have no place in real-life politics.
If Governor Patrick was determined to go to that particular mosque and meet with Imam Faaruuq, he had an obligation to progressives who support him to vigorously defend gay and women’s rights and to question the provisions of Muslim law that seek to make one religion — Islam — one with the state. Patrick failed that test.
Tortuous BushIn case anyone thought that George W. Bush meant it when he insisted as president that “we do not torture” — who thought that perhaps he was uninformed, or misled about what was being done in his name — that myth has now been dispelled. Bush, it turns out, has a heart as black as Dick Cheney’s.
Speaking in Grand Rapids, Michigan, last week, the former president acknowledged that “Yeah, we waterboarded Khalid Sheikh Mohammed,” adding that he would “do it again to save lives.”
Put aside the dubious idea that waterboarding has saved any lives, or might in the future. Not only did Bush confess to a horrific, and prosecutable, crime with his statement; he also undermined Barack Obama’s attempts to undo the harm our torture has caused to America’s interests, reputation, and safety.
When Obama, on his second day in office, banned “interrogation techniques” such as waterboarding, he was asking the international community to believe that what happened under Bush-Cheney was an anomaly. But Bush’s unrepentant endorsement makes it crystal-clear that the current ban is the anomaly — and will last only until the next Republican president takes office.
Republicans are now the party of torture. They may criticize Bush’s deficit spending, and even the Iraq War, but almost none repudiate the use of torture. (The lone exception — Senator John McCain, also the only one to have experienced it — is on the verge of losing his primary to a challenge from the right.) If, God forbid, the GOP should get the White House back any time soon, the water will begin flowing immediately.