Boston Marathon bomber's mosque long a lightning rod for criticism

By Perry Chiaramonte
Published April 24, 2013
FoxNews.com



  • The Islamic Society of Boston mosque in Cambridge has had its share of controversy in the past. (AP Photo/Allen Breed)


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Investigators piecing together the recent activities of the two suspected Boston Marathon bombers in an effort to determine when the older of the brothers began to embrace a radical brand of Islam should take a close look at where he worshipped, according to a group that has been eyeing the mosque for years.
Friends and family say that after Tamerlan Tsarnaev's Islamic faith had taken a sharp turn toward extremism sometime around 2009, the year he quit smoking, drinking and boxing. They say he also had begun to influence the religious beliefs of his younger brother, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev. Their growing faith might have been the cause of an upheaval in the Tsarnaev household, according to a recent report in The Wall Street Journal.
Tamerlan Tsarnaev, 26, who died early Friday after a shootout with police, worshipped at the Islamic Society of Boston, located in the brothers' Cambridge neighborhood. Officials at the mosque stated that Tamerlan was an “infrequent visitor,” but reports suggest that the 26-year-old had been attending Friday prayer services for at least the past 18 months.
“This is a radical mosque."
- Dennis Hale, Americans for peace and tolerance

"In their visits, they never exhibited any violent sentiments or behavior," the Islamic Society of Boston said in a statement. "Otherwise, they would have been immediately reported to the FBI. After we learned of their identities, we encouraged anyone who knew them in our congregation to immediately report to law enforcement, which has taken place."
Mosque officials said Tsarnaev was kicked out three months ago after becoming agitated by a sermon in which an imam praised Martin Luther King Jr., who Tsarnaev said was not worthy of such esteem because he was not Muslim.
No one from the law enforcement community has publicly suggested that the mosque played any role in radicalizing either Tsarnaev brother. But Dennis Hale, of a Boston-based group called Americans for Peace and Tolerance, said his group has monitored the mosque for several years, and said there's reason for concern.
“This is a radical mosque,” said Hale, who is also director of undergraduate studies at the Political Science department of Boston College.
Hale said the mosque has ties to the Muslim Brotherhood and has frequently hosted radical speakers. He also noted that one of its founders, Abdurahman Alamoudi, pled guilty in 2004 for conducting illegal transactions with the Libyan government and his partial role in a conspiracy to assassinate Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah. Alamoudi, who served as an Islamic adviser to President Clinton, was accused by critics of espousing pro-American language while lobbying in Washington, while expressing his support of terror groups Hamas and Hezbollah when addressing Islamist rallies.
Sheikh Ahmed Mansour, who has served on the APT board with Hale and founded the Quranists sect on Islam which led to his eventual exile from his native Egypt, told FoxNews.com that the rhetoric at the Cambridge mosque gave him a bad feeling.
"I was astonished seeing that this mosque, at the time I was there, was controlled by fanatics," he said, recalling how he attended sunset prayers one Friday while he was a visiting fellow at Harvard Law School. "Their writings and teachings were fanatical. I left and refused to go back to pray. I left Egypt to escape the Muslim Brotherhood, but I had found it there."
Mansour said fiery sermons can spur impressionable young men to violence, even if the speaker doesn't explicitly advocate it.
"These terrorists who kill are victimized by the sheiks. So the criminal are the sheiks," he said. "This mosque continues to increase fanaticism among Muslims."
Among the controversial figures associated with Islamic Society of Boston, which runs the mosque Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended:
- In March 2010, Imam Abdullah Faarooq gave a sermon praising Aafia Siddiqui, an MIT graduate who had returned to her native Pakistan in 2003 and was later exposed as courier and financier for Al Qaeda. She was eventually arrested in Afghanistan with containers of sodium cyanide and notes on making a bomb. In his sermon, Faarooq proclaimed Siddiqui's innocence and told worshippers, "You must grab on to this rope, grab on to the typewriter, grab on to the shovel, grab on to the gun and the sword, don't be afraid to step out into this world and do your job."
- Yusuf Al-Qaradawi, an original trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston and known as the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood. In the past, he has told followers in sermons that Jews and homosexuals should be "exterminated.” The Anti-Defamation League has referred to him as a “Theologian of Terror,” and he once wrote in an Arabic newspaper editorial that Jews are "the Rapists of worshippers of Allah."
- Tariq Mehanna and Ahmed Abousamra were mosque members who, in 2009, were indicted by federal prosecutors for providing material support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill in a foreign country.
Hale cited a sermon delivered by Sheikh Yasir Qadhi, in which he called Christians “spiritually filthy” and said that Muslims could not be citizens of a county where man makes law because they must follow God’s law, as examples of the mosque's misguided teachings.
Requests for comment from officials at the ISB were not immediately returned. But one expert on counterterrorism told FoxNews.com that if authorities establish the brothers were motivated by their faith, the role of the mosque where they worshipped should be examined.
“It’s very possible that he [Tamerlan] was influenced by the teachings there,” said Clare Lopez, a senior fellow at The Clarion Project and a strategic policy and intelligence expert with a focus on the Middle East. “We don’t know for certain, but if you look at the way this mosque was founded and who it was founded by, you can at least suspect that he was influenced.”
　
　
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/04/24/mosque-where-boston-marathon-bombing-suspect-attended-has-controversial-past/