About Us > News & Press > March 1, 2006

In dispute, cultures meet

March 1, 2006
By Charles A. Radin
Boston Globe

Imam Ibrahim Sayar during a call to prayer last month at a former Catholic church in Revere that is being converted into a mosque at a cost of nearly $1 million. (Jonathan Wiggs/ Globe Staff)

A bitter battle over a Roxbury mosque being built by the Islamic Society of Boston has deeply chilled Muslim-Jewish relations in Boston. But elsewhere in the region, interfaith activities and thoughtful dialogue between the two groups are blossoming, according to imams, rabbis, and lay people from both communities.

And while construction of the Islamic Society's large $24.5 million mosque and cultural center proceeds at a snail's pace, other Islamic mosques, schools, and community centers -- some modest, others richly appointed -- are opening in Revere, Billerica, Brighton, and other communities.

The building boom underscores the diversity and prosperity of a Muslim community around Boston that now includes an estimated 60,000 to 70,000 people and more than 30 mosques in Massachusetts, community leaders say. And the interfaith dialogue reflects a determination among Muslims and Jews that their relations not be derailed by what many see as a Boston political spat.

The fight involves criticism from the Anti-Defamation League and others that the Cambridge-based Islamic Society of Boston has failed to distance itself from anti-Semitic comments made by society trustees. At the same time, challenges have been mounted about the deal with the city under which the society obtained the land for the mosque. The society is suing the Boston Herald, WFXT-TV (Channel 25), and a number of individuals and groups, many of them Jewish, alleging that they illegally conspired to block the mosque project.

Many Muslims and Jews say they are far more concerned about negative stereotypes of their religions and about the dangers posed to both communities by continuing ignorance and alienation between them.

''There are good people and bad people in all communities," said Imam Talal Eid, the region's longest-serving imam, who is currently Muslim chaplain at Massachusetts General Hospital and at Brandeis University.

''People should look closely at Islam so to know the difference between good Muslims and bad Muslims."

Nancy Kaufman, director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, said that communications between leading Jewish groups and the Islamic Society of Boston have largely halted because of the lawsuit.

But in surrounding communities, because of concerns that the Boston clash and other issues could escalate tensions, Muslims and Jews are reaching out to each other.

One of the newest Islamic enterprises is a still-unnamed prayer and education center on Chestnut Hill Avenue in Brighton. Anwar Faisal, an Allston-Brighton real estate man, paid about $1 million for a run-down American Legion post which he plans to turn into a center to promote interfaith understanding and exchanges.

Faisal said that he wants younger Muslims, including those who came to the United States to study, to run the center, which will offer classes to members of the public in Islamic culture, Arabic, and the Koran.

Space also will be available for Allston-Brighton community meetings and for the American Legion, Faisal said.

''We want this to be a place where cultures meet," he said.

Some who are involved in organized dialogues say the efforts of Muslims and Jews in the metropolitan area to get to know each other in recent years are paying off now, by keeping tensions over the bitter charges and countercharges surrounding the Islamic Society of Boston from getting out of hand.

The controversy over the society and the Roxbury mosque was the subject of January's meeting of the Muslim-Jewish Dialogue of Greater Boston, a group created by the New England chapter of the American Jewish Committee and the Masumeen Center of Hopkinton, an organization of Shi'ite Muslims.

Mahmoud Jafri, a cochairman of the dialogue, said it was the most polarized issue the group has taken on, and it prompted a broad range of opinions among the 50 people gathered, who represented various streams of Judaism and Islam.

''We decided to go back to our communities and tell people this is not an issue of Muslim versus Jew," Jafri said. ''We are telling people, 'Don't let this venom and fire spread to our communities.' "

Imam Salih Yucel of the Boston Dialogue Center, which has its roots in the moderate Islam of Turkey, says the top priority of his organization is to foster interfaith education and understanding.

''We do not bring politics into the place of the Prophet, and we try to be positive as much as we can," Yucel said during a walk through the partially renovated sanctuary of the former Church of St. Theresa in Revere, which members of the center are converting to a mosque at a cost of nearly $1 million.

In Revere, too, openness to non-Muslim neighbors is a priority. During Ramadan, the Muslim month of daylight-hours fasting, neighbors are invited to share in the evening fast-breaking meal.

Last year, in cooperation with nearby St. Anthony of Padua Parish, they held a bake and cook sale for the benefit of the local library; a similar event is planned this year to benefit the Fire Department.

Yucel said he has told the group's Jewish dialogue partners that both sides need to put aside big geopolitical issues and concentrate on gaining basic understanding of one another.

''We cannot solve the Israeli-Palestinian situation in a small group in Boston or Cambridge," he said. ''Let's bring our children together. Let's know each other. We do not know the Jews and the Jews do not know us."

Both groups are learning. Jews are discovering that Massachusetts Muslims are extremely diverse, with many thousands of Pakistanis, Somalis, and Turks.

''The world paints us with a very broad brush," Jafri said. Many Jews ''do not understand that the 'take' on Israel of Muslims from Pakistan is very different than the 'take' of a Muslim from Lebanon."

Rabbi Moshe Waldoks of Temple Beth Zion in Brookline believes that more interfaith exchange and education are needed.

''If we in Boston, who say we are committed to civil discourse and civil society, can't talk to each other and sometimes agree to disagree," he said, ''how can we expect it to happen in the really troubled places of the world?"

Charles A. Radin can be reached at radin@globe.com
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