Time to interrogate Jacoby

Why does the Globe waste an op-ed column with material that should be a paid advertisement?

Joachim Martillo (ThorsProvoni@aol.com)

Dear Editor:

Jeff Jacoby argues in "New questions for the [Islamic Society of Boston (ISB)]" (The Boston Globe, April 25, 2007, http://tinyurl.com/2egahh) that a November 2000 payment by check, which was signed by an ISB director and which was made out to a third party with the memo "Travel for speaker Abdurahman Alamoudi -- 11/10/00 - 11/12/00," belies contentions by the ISB that "[Alamoudi] has had no role in, or affiliation with, the ISB for approximately 20 years."

The check to a third party is a thin thread on which to hang a claim of a connection between Alamoudi and the ISB at a time period when Alamoudi was often meeting with Hillary Clinton, George W. Bush, and conservative tax reformer Grover Norquist. Lots of people associated with him both publicly and also frequently, but when I search news reports from the November 2000 time frame, I find no mention of Alamoudi in any way linked with the ISB.

In his March 21, 2007 column entitled Defeating radical Islam (http://tinyurl.com/2qzfta), Jacoby wrote, "On 9/11, many Americans woke up to the fact that a deadly enemy is arrayed against us and that effective counterterrorism is critical to our national security. But even more critical is the need to delegitimize the Islamist message that resonates with so many Muslims. To permanently end the 'war on terrorism,' we must defeat the ideology that motivates the terrorists."

Jacoby is wrong. To end the war on terrorism, we must replace the uncivil invective, which Jacoby and similar ideologues fling at Muslims, with civil discussion of issues. The ISB offered genuine dialogue and mediation, but the defendants in the ISB lawsuit rejected it. Jacoby debases American social political discourse when he serves as a mouthpiece for the dubious insinuations that the defendants have cobbled together from discovery materials.

When he aids the defendants in their ongoing campaign of demonization and defamation to prevent Muslim Americans from exercising their basic civil rights, Jacoby becomes the real threat to America because he is participating in a racist subversion of the US Constitution under cover of a vigilante anti-terrorist witch-hunt.

Joachim Martillo

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