A Tale of Two Mosques: Boston and Be’er Sheva
Today’s Boston Globe reports the latest skirmish between the pro-Israel David Project, which opposes creation of a large new mosque in Boston, and the Boston Redevelopment Authority, which was instrumental in arranging building space across from Roxbury Community College:
Leaders of the David Project have questioned the BRA’s deal with the Islamic Society of Boston, under which the society is building the mosque. They have also suggested the BRA is trying to keep details of the arrangement secret by blocking the release of public information.
I won’t repeat the legal skirmishes here because this is one of those many cases where law is used not as a reason but as a weapon. Joachim Martillo & Karin Friedemann recount much of this history in an article focused on Boston Globe coverage, appropriately titled as a question: Is Islamophobia the New Anti-Semitism?
Back in Israel another city is trying to prevent a mosque from opening. Be’er Sheva’s mosque closed when the city’s Arab population fled during the 1948 war.
According to today’s Haaretz:
The mosque was originally constructed in 1906 and converted into the Negev Museum in the 1950s. The museum has been abandoned since 1994, when the city’s engineers determined it was unsafe for use. … The current public struggle over the fate of the mosque began in July 1997, when local Muslims and activists from the Islamic Movement began praying at the site. In response, a member of Be’er Sheva’s city council dumped bovine manure at the entrance to the mosque.
As a lawyer working for Be’er Sheva told me last month, plenty of legal arguments support the city’s refusal to let Be’er Sheva’s only mosque become a mosque once again. It was clear, though, that the technicalities were convenient excuses for something much more obvious: a determination not to hand Muslims a victory. According to the news story,
The Be’er Sheva municipality has said in the past that opening the mosque for prayer would harm relations between the local residents. Adalah [The Adalah Legal Center for Arab Minority Rights in Israel] believes, however, that the city’s motives are political, and that keeping the structure closed would cause more damage to the social fabric.
Israel’s Supreme Court seems to be trying to sidestep the issue. They proposed converting the mosque into “the Museum of Islamic Culture and the Peoples of the East” but Adalah has now refused, pointing out “that there is one synagogue for every 700 Be’er Sheva residents, [but] more than 5,000 Muslim residents of the city, as well as some 180,000 Bedouins in the surrounding areas.”
Did you catch the part about dumping cow shit?
March 7th, 2007 at 2:33 pm
[…] last summer went to parts of the city I visited a few months later. It begins with a stop at the mosque I referred to a few weeks ago: We met on Saturday afternoon, July 8, 2006, to drive to the old city of Beersheba, […]