Some media outlets have suggested that the Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center was an incubator of radicalism because the Tsarnaev brothers occasionally worshipped there, and because they had permitted so-called radicals who defended terrorism suspects to speak there.
I was one of those radicals. I spoke at the ISBCC in 2011 about the pre-emptive prosecution of Muslims in FBI sting operations, particularly the case of my client, Yassin Aref, a Kurdish Iraqi imam from Albany whom the government had confused with someone they believed was involved with al-Qaida.
Yassin was tricked by a criminal con artist hired by the FBI. He witnessed a loan he believed was perfectly legal, but the government claimed this was material support to the terrorist organization that the provocateur said he represented.
Despite Yassin's repeated statements that he did not support any terrorist group anywhere, the post-9/11 climate of fear, coupled with the judge telling the jury that the FBI had good reasons to target him, made the jury afraid to acquit him. This innocent man is serving a 15-year sentence.
There are many similar cases in which the FBI targeted young, vulnerable Muslim men. The National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms has compiled a database of so-called Muslim terrorism cases. Ninty-four percent of them contain elements of pre-emptive prosecution, meaning those cases were either sting operations led by informants or involved targeting defendants who weren't engaging in or planning any violent acts.
We speak about this at any venue that will have us. Often mosques won't — out of fear they'll be attacked, the way they were in a recent USA Today article (http://tinyurl.com/d748nv9).
A New York Times op-ed last month by Boston Islamic center imam Suhaib Webb and Scott Korb, "No Room for Radicals," pointed out that it's not the young men who receive religious training in mosques who become interested in violent attacks. Rather, it's those who are alienated and ignorant about Islam and subsequently search out extremists on the Internet. If mosques are intimidated into kicking out young men in need of counsel, they'll become more alienated and will search for advice elsewhere — with potentially deadly results.
That's why I don't accept the word radical as a pejorative term. I have always thought of myself as a radical, in the sense that my beliefs are very different from those of the people in power.
For example, what about opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan? In the Boston case and others, the suspects were said to be angry about the wars. I'm angry about them, too, and the thousands of civilian deaths. So are many non-Muslims.
It's often unsafe for Muslims to speak against any U.S. incursions, especially if their families come from the countries under attack.
Then you have angry young men who can't go to their mosques or community centers to express how legitimately heartbroken and angry they are about the devastation wrought in the land of their birth.
Wouldn't it be better if these young men could voice their anguish openly, learn to see that if killing civilians is wrong in one place, it's wrong everywhere, and then choose a path of legitimate activism aimed at changing U.S. policy? But the government would rather isolate and target them in sting operations.
USA Today and other media outlets have falsely accused the Muslim community in Boston of encouraging terrorism. Nothing could be further from the truth. Instead of false stereotypes, we need more radicalism — radical understanding, radical tolerance and radical peace that gets to the root of the problem, not inflames it.
Kathy Manley is a criminal defense and legal attorney and legal director of the National Coalition to Protect Civil Freedoms.
