Boston mosque project causes Muslim-Jewish tension

WASHINGTON: What could be the largest mosque in Northeastern United States is generating a great deal of tension between the Jewish and Muslim communities in Boston.

Work on the $24.5 million, 70,000 square foot project for the 70,000-strong Muslim community in the Boston area has come to a virtual halt because of litigation and increasing tension between the Jewish and Muslim communities. Around 70 percent of work on the mosque has been completed.

Jewish leaders charge that certain former and current officials in the Islamic Society of Boston, which is building the mosque, are linked to terrorist groups and have failed to distance themselves from radical Islam and anti-Jewish statements. This has been vigorously denied by the society, which defends its non-sectarian record.

The Jewish community has taken particular exception to a former trustee of the society, Egyptian cleric Sheikh Youssef al-Qaradawi, who has praised Hamas and Hezbollah, declared terrorist organisations by the US State Department. According to Larry Lowenthal, executive director of the American Jewish Committee’s Boston branch: “There is a great deal of anxiety. The distance that I think has to be established between these current leaders and their colleagues who have made troubling statements … has to be clearly distinct and established.”

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