... The city has helped the Wahhabi clerical establishment - purveyors of the most intolerant religious teachings on the planet - and the Muslim Brotherhood - genesis of all Sunni terrorist organizations - set up shop in the Cradle of Liberty, flying a false flag of moderation. And to make matters worse, this sad milestone is praised as a great victory for diversity and a boon to local Muslims.

Meanwhile, those who criticize this arrangement are branded as bigots and dragged into court, while the press and public officials ignore the links between the leaders of the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center and Islamist hatred and terrorism. These claims are supported by tens of thousands of pages of evidence - much of it delivered to us by the society as a result of the discovery process triggered by their own lawsuit.

So why worry? What will the following facts portend for the future of interfaith harmony in Boston and of the venerable and moderate Muslim community of Boston?

• The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center offers courses from the Islamic American University, whose vice chairman is Jamal Badawi, a trustee of the center, and headed by Sheik Yusuf al-Qaradawi, a hate-mongering preacher from the Gulf who has been banned from Egypt and the United States. As the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, he praises suicide bombers, debates the correct way to murder homosexuals, and has urged that the Jews be murdered "to the last one.'"
• Trustee Walid Fitahi has claimed that according to the Koran, Jews are "killers of the Prophets,'' responsible for the "oppression, murder, and rape of the worshipers of Allah.'' Yet Fitahi was chosen to read Koranic passages at the ribbon-cutting ceremony.
• ISB records show that the organization has both received money from and donated money to organizations that were later investigated or shut down for terrorist activities. Among the recipients of ISB largesse are the Benevolence International Foundation - an Al Qaeda charity - and the recently convicted Holy Land Foundation - a Hamas charity.

These are the people who will now be ministering to the spiritual needs of the local Muslim community and bringing to the center preachers who share their views...

Dear Michael,

You wrote that Jewish organizations and others are wrong to doubt the sincerity of the leaders of the ISB/MAS's new Islamic Center. You want us to rely on your experience with these leaders who you find "gracious, sincere and warm."

I am sure that you are well intentioned. I think you project your good intentions onto the leadership of the ISB/MAS but sadly you have not only been misled, you seem to be practicing - and advocating - a policy of perpetual self-delusion:

Instead of dealing with facts, you repeat the MAS talking points and vouch for their personal charm. Here are some of the facts you have decided to ignore:

1. We can start with the depressing episode of Walid Fitahi, ISB's outreach director, who made "gracious, sincere, and warm" friends with Jewish rabbis while writing in Arabic papers that Jews were the rapists of the worshipers of Allah and would be scourged for perpetrating the worst of evils. When asked how their outreach director, who spoke so warmly to the Jews of Boston, could say such things, the Islamic Society of Boston denied he ever wrote this. When Jewish agencies persisted, the ISB said that what we had found was simply a bad translation from the Arabic. But it wasn't, and so they finally said, "Well he didn't mean ALL the Jews." Maybe he didn't mean you, Michael. But don't count on it.

2. Then there was the matter of the ISB misleading the Globe editorial board. After it had emerged that the founder of the ISB, and several of the actual owners and Trustees were Islamists with frightening hate and terror connections, the ISB local spokespeople told the Globe that they had a new local board which would run things here in Boston. Not true. Their documents state that the local board cannot make financial or governance decisions without first getting approval from the foreign-based Trustees.

3. And Michael, what about the real owners of the Islamic Center? When it was discovered that Yusef al-Qaradawi, the theologian of the Muslim Brotherhood, was a Trustee, the ISB removed his name from their documents. His name had been on sworn legal filings as Trustee for 8 years running, but the ISB told us that this was a "clerical error." Do you believe that too, Michael? The founder of the ISB, a man named Alamoudi, is in jail for 23 years for terrorism and funneling money to al-Qaeda. The current president of the ISB Trust, Osama Kandil, founded the radical Muslim Arab Youth Association, a group which brought Jew-hating foreign sheikhs to speak to Muslim teens around the country. Jamal Badawi, is an example of a "new" trustee, brought in to show the ISB is actually moderate. But he is a member of the Muslim Brotherhood, and a founder of the Muslim American Society, which federal authorities say is the Brotherhood's American front group.

Michael, you suggest we trust this group because they are nice to you personally. Did it EVER occur to you that you are being used?

You want us NOT to take into account statements by their leaders and spokespeople and invited speakers which are not intended for our ears?:

Tell us, Michael... what should we do with this data:

1. Qaradawi, who is partnering with Badawi in an Islamic University in Boston, can be seen on www.memri.org saying that homosexuals and Jews should be killed.

2. Following Qaradawi's preachings on wife beating, the ISB had on its website a set of instructions on how Muslim men should beat their wives. (The whip should be hung in a public place in the home.)

3. A preacher named Qadi, who the ISB/MAS hosted at their Cambridge mosque in March 2009, has said in previous talks that Christians are theologically "filthy," that there was no Holocaust, and that Jews are trying to destroy Muslims. (If you missed this piece of data, see www.hatefreeamerica.org for the video.)

4. Jamal Badawi, the newest ISB Trustee, says that Muslims should seek to install Islamic Law wherever they live. Why wouldn't that include Boston?

Michael, I truly believe that we could agree on much more than it would seem from our point-counter/point op-eds today in the Globe.

I would like to propose some "INTRA-faith dialogue:"

I'm sure there would be synagogues that would host us to go calmly through these issues. And maybe churches as well.

I await your positive response.

Sincerely,

Charles Jacobs