Lenny Zakim, the former director of the New England office of the Anti-Defamation League, who died in 1999, would not have good things to say about the Muslim Justice League, an organization that purports to defend the civil rights of Muslims in the United States. In late September, the Massachusetts-based organization took a page out of the Ku Klux Klan’s playbook and deployed masked thugs to harass a reporter at a rally it held in downtown Boston.
Being an aggressive and intrepid opponent of such hoodlums, Zakim would want to know who was funding the league’s antics. He would be disappointed to learn that the Lenny Zakim Fund, the charitable foundation he established in 1995 soon after he was diagnosed with cancer, gave the MJL at least $100,000 between 2018 and 2022 – according to the Internal Revenue Service. Zakim, who has a bridge crossing the Charles River named after him, would be angry that the fund’s current staffers refuse to answer questions about its support for the Muslim Justice League in the years since, stating they are “not in a position to comment.”
Speakers encouraged attendees to follow the examples of Matt Nelson, a troubled young man who set himself on fire on Sept. 11 outside the Israeli consulate in Boston in protest of American support for Israel and died four days later.
Foundation staffers have good reason to stay quiet about their decision to fund the League. On September 25, the organization conducted a rally at the Public Garden in Boston, where speakers encouraged attendees to follow the examples of Matt Nelson, a troubled young man who set himself on fire on September 11 outside the Israeli consulate in Boston in protest of American support for Israel and died four days later; and Caleb Gannon, another troubled leftist, who was shot in the belly after he violently attacked a pro-Israel activist in Newton the following day.
“How can we not relate to the urge to throw our bodies on the line for Palestine?” a speaker said the crowd of more than 200 people who came to laud Nelson and Gannon. “We will keep fighting for Palestine as you did with your body and your words,” she said, suggesting that setting oneself on fire and physically attacking someone in the streets are good things to do.
Muslim Justice League executive director Fatema Ahmad affirmed this narrative by calling on rally attendees to “Find ways to take action, big and small, because … we are honoring folks who are truly resisting. That is why they are shahids; that is why they are martyrs. They are acting for justice and again, Muslims love justice and there’s nothing this country hates more than justice.” With rhetoric like this, Ahmad encouraged young people to engage in acts of self-destruction and violence against their “justice-hating” neighbors.
The Muslim Justice League’s rank anti-American incitement does not square with the Zakim foundation’s charitable mission. Zakim’s life was based on a belief that the American people wanted justice and could be convinced to do the right thing through reasoned appeals to their goodwill. In 1991, he warned his allies in the African American community against divisive rhetoric, with Newsweek reporting that “Whites have grown weary of black [sic] demands for ‘race-conscious remedies,’ ” Zakim said, and of endless accusations of racism. “White America,” he said, “got tired of being called guilty.”
The threat of violence was clearly on display at the Sept. 25, 2024, rally, when the Muslim Justice League sicced masked thugs on this reporter as I recorded the rank anti-Americanism by speakers.
Americans also are sick of being threatened with violence by radicals of all stripes. Sadly, the threat of violence was clearly on display at the September 25 rally, when the Muslim Justice League sicced masked thugs on this reporter as I recorded the rank anti-Americanism by speakers. One of these thugs, who carried a flag for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – a proscribed terrorist organization based in the war zones that has murdered hundreds of Jews – made it perfectly clear he was willing to go to jail for his efforts to stop the recording. After one of the rally’s speakers made reference to Malcom X’s time in prison, he declared, “I just spent two years in jail, speaking of that. I don’t give a [expletive]. So keep doing this [recording].” He then pulled up a sleeve to reveal a tattoo of some sort. “See this? I don’t give a [expletive].”
To be fair, Zakim is not the only Boston-area foundation that has funded the Muslim Justice League, according to nonprofit tax forms filed with the IRS. Between 2018 and 2023, the Herman and Frieda L. Miller Foundation gave almost $200,000. The Hyams Foundation, founded by Godfrey M. Hyams, a Boston metallurgist, engineer, and financier, gave the league a total of $175,000 between 2018 and 2022. And the Barr Foundation, another Boston-based charity, gave a total of $105,000 between 2019 and 2022.
Only one of these organizations responded to my queries about their support for the league. Prentice Zinn, who works at the Miller foundation, wrote in an email that the foundation will take my concerns seriously as they consider upcoming grantmaking, adding that the facts uncovered “raise the important question of how organizations’ politics, activities, and expression evolve in unexpected ways.”
It’s a pretty convoluted response, but it gets the point across. The Miller foundation is not very happy with what the Muslim Justice League has done with its money and is going to think long and hard about cutting another check to the organization. Let’s hope the Zakim Foundation follows suit.
