OPINION: Accused Boston Bombers' Mosque Should Be Shuttered

USA Today reported Tuesday that “the mosque attended by the two brothers accused in the Boston Marathon bombing has been associated with other terrorist suspects, has invited radical speakers to a sister mosque in Boston and is affiliated with a Muslim group that critics say nurses grievances that can lead to extremism.”

The Islamic Society of Boston was founded by Abdulrahman Alamoudi, the leading “moderate Muslim” in Washington throughout the 1990s. Alamoudi turned out to be an al-Qaeda financier and is now in prison.

And it wasn’t just Alamoudi. USA Today notes that others linked to the Islamic Society of Boston include Aafia Siddiqui, who “was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans for a chemical attack in New York City”; Tarek Mehanna, who was “sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda”; Ahmad Abousamra, who “is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country”; and Jamal Badawi, who “was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.”

Originally a trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston was Sheikh Yusuf al-Qaradawi, the spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and perhaps the most popular Islamic preacher in the world. He once said on al-Jazeera: “Throughout history, Allah has imposed upon the [Jews] people who would punish them for their corruption. The last punishment was carried out by Hitler… This was divine punishment for them. Allah willing, the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”

There have been well over 20,000 deadly Islamic attacks since 9/11 (not including thwarted attacks). There has been a shocking number of jihad plots in the U.S. in recent years. Operation fetal position is not a strategy for victory, and make no mistake about it: we are at war.

On Wednesday, my organization, the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI) issued an 18-point action plan for defending freedom in the wake of the Boston jihad bombings (read the whole thing here). Two of the points apply directly to the Islamic Society of Boston, where the Tsarnaev brothers went for Muslim prayers: 

•   AFDI calls for immediate investigation into foreign mosque funding in the West and for new legislation making foreign funding of mosques in non-Muslim nations illegal.
•   AFDI calls for surveillance of mosques and regular inspections of mosques in the U.S. and other non-Muslim nations to look for pro-violence materials. Any mosque advocating jihad or any aspects of Sharia that conflict with Constitutional freedoms and protections should be closed.

A survey was published in December 2011 by Perspectives on Terrorism, a journal run by the Terrorism Research Initiative (TRI). This survey showed why the mosques need to be monitored: 

A leading international peer-reviewed journal specializing in the empirical study of terrorism has published a study that found that 80% of U.S. mosques provide their worshippers with jihad-style literature promoting the use of violence against non-believers and that the imams in those mosques expressly promote that literature. The study also found that when a mosque imam or its worshippers were ‘sharia-adherent,’ as measured by certain behaviors in conformity with Islamic law, the mosque was more likely to provide this violent literature and the imam was more likely to promote it.

These findings confirm what three previous studies have already concluded. Robert Spencer gives the details: “In 1998, Sheikh Muhammad Hisham Kabbani, a Sufi leader, visited 114 mosques in the United States. Then he gave testimony before a State Department Open Forum in January 1999, and asserted that 80% of American mosques taught the ‘extremist ideology.’ Then there was the Center for Religious Freedom’s 2005 study, and the Mapping Sharia Project’s 2008 study. Each independently showed that upwards of 80% of mosques in America were preaching hatred of Jews and Christians and the necessity ultimately to impose Islamic rule.”

Spencer adds: “There are no countervailing studies that challenge these results.”

And now the Boston jihad bombing is deadly proof of the influence that these hotbeds of jihad indoctrination have on young Muslims, including those who are Americanized, white (i.e., not suffering from any residual racism in American society), and assimilated. The Tsarnaevs weren’t discriminated against. Dzhokhar Tsarnaev received a scholarship from the city of Cambridge, Massachusetts in 2011. The Tsarnaevs were Muslims who had at their disposal all the advantages of the West, including welfare.

And they fit right in at their mosque.

Yet despite all this, Muslim Brotherhood groups like the Hamas-tied Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) are issuing press releases saying that Tamerlan Tsarnaev was thrown out of his mosque. That may be true – but within days, Tamerlan was backfor prayers.

It’s a national security issue: the Islamic Society of Boston must be shut down.

Pamela Geller is the President of the American Freedom Defense Initiative (AFDI), publisher of AtlasShrugs.com and author of the new book Freedom or Submission: On the Dangers of Islamic Extremism & American Complacency, as well as The Post-American Presidency: The Obama Administration’s War on America and Stop the Islamization of America: A Practical Guide to the Resistance.