Readers might remember our article about the Islamic Center of New England (ICNE) earlier this year. ICNE operates two mosques near Boston that have histories of promoting Islamist organizations and preachers. After we alerted Congressman Joe Kennedy to this extremism, he cancelled a visit to one of its mosques in Sharon, MA.
ICNE wasn’t always radical. Once, its imam was Talal Eid, a prominent moderate Muslim cleric. Eid was forced out, however, by Islamists who took over the mosque: Abdulbadi Abousamra, whose son is a FBI most-wanted ISIS leader; and Hafiz Masood, the brother of the terrorist leader behind the Mumbai attacks and now a spokesman for one of his brother’s organizations.
These days, ICNE is controlled by a number of local Islamist operatives, who bring extremist speakers to address the local community on an almost-weekly basis.
ICNE’s upcoming lecture on December 16, for example, is titled “Prophetic Empathy,” and will be delivered by an imam named Mikaeel Smith.
Smith is a graduate of Dar ul-Uloom al-Madania, an Islamic seminary in New York state that belongs to the Deobandi sect, a hardline South Asian movement from which the Taliban emerged.
In an article published at Muslim Matters, Smith describes homosexuality as “evil” and like a “tumour.” Referring to the death sentence for homosexuality prescribed by Sharia law, Smith notes that “when living in America, or any other non-Islamic country for that matter ... the penal law and some aspects of civil law are not to be implemented.” He then adds, however, that, “this does not mean that a Muslim should lose sight of what his or her belief deems to be ideal.”
In addition, Smith has shared a Facebook post claiming that the savagery of ISIS was invented by the British and American governments to justify waging war.
Smith is appearing at the ICNE as an “instructor” of the Qalam Institute, a seminary founded in 2009 to provide religious training at various mosques, student groups and conferences around the country.
Islamist Watch asked the Massachusetts branch of CAIR for comment, but we received no response.
Smith’s extremist rhetoric certainly made him a good fit for Qalam. Like Smith, both of Qalam’s founding imams, Hussain Kamani and Abdul Nasir Jangda were also trained in Deobandi seminaries. And both Kamani and Jangda are regular speakers at the ICNE. Both are also supporters of sex slavery, with Kamani declaring that Muslim men may fulfil any sexual desires “with a female slave that belongs to him.” Those who commit adultery or have sex outside of marriage, Kamani adds, must be “stoned to death.”
A document currently hosted on Qalam’s website, for a course taught by Kamani, warns Muslims to seek “cleanliness” and “purity”, so “do not resemble the Jews.” The same document also cites Quranic commentary to advise parents: “Order your children to pray at the age of seven. And beat them (lightly) if they do not do so by the age of ten.”
Further examples of Qalam and its instructors’ extremism can be found in this Islamist Watch article from November 2016.
Most alarmingly, as well as its mosques, ICNE manages two schools: the Islamic Academy of New England, an accredited elementary school; and the Al Noor Academy, an accredited high school.
If ICNE gives platforms to preachers who support sex slavery, support the stoning of women, express hatred for homosexuals and refer to Americans as “filth,” then what is ICNE teaching the children – the next generation of Boston’s Muslims – in its schools?
