Tag Archive for: Suhaib Webb

Who is Suhaib Webb, DC’s ‘soft Salafist’ and former Imam of the Radical Boston Mosque?

Note the above picture of the lanky blonde bearded Imam Suhaib Webb leading Friday Ju’umah prayers at the Washington, DC “Church of the Epiphany in this picture of a Washington Post Magazine.  Webb is the Oklahoma City ‘bad boy and hip hop DJ follower of the Los Angeles ‘bloods’ gang who had his own epiphany as a teenager after reading the holy Qur’an converting to Islam  that consternated his Christian parents. He was the subject of a January 22, 2017 profile in the Washington Post Magazine,An unlikely messenger becomes a guiding spirit to young Muslims.”

Webb went on after his conversion to Islam to become an Islamic ‘scholar’ and Imam at the Muslim Brotherhood (MB) – controlled Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC). The ISBCC was built with over $22 million of Saudi and Emirati funding on city-owned land in the Roxbury section of Boston and dedicated in June 2009 with the praise of the myopic Massachusetts Governor Derval Patrick, the late Boston mayor, Thomas Menino and active participation of the Boston Combined Jewish Philanthropies leadership and even representatives of the Massachusetts Board of Rabbis (MRB). We chronicled this ‘stellar event’ in an August 2009 New English Review article, “Chelm on the Charles River”.

The MRB is joining an inter-faith gathering at the ISBCC on Friday, 10th protesting President Trump’ travel ban and immigration policies.

Suhaib Webb was ISBCC Imam at the time of the Boston Marathon bombing. We chronicled in a May 2013  NER article, “Refugee Jihad Terror in Boston,” about the terror attack and the Boston Community reaction.  Webb was ‘disinvited’ from an official community eulogy ceremony for the 3 victims of the bombing; the 3 dead and more than 264 injured and maimed.

Fast forward to February 2017 after Webb left the ISBCC, following the Boston Marathon bombing, to become the founder of a major Da’wa-call of the faithful program in our nation’s capital, DC Center. He has become the rock star of what we might call ‘soft Salafism’, with a large international social media following. The Washington Post profile had a hit against my Boston chaver Charles Jacobs of Americans for Peace and Tolerance (APT) that published this APT rebuttal this week.

Jacobs fought a 12 year war with the ISBCC whose trustees included notorious anti-Semitic Egyptian preacher Yusuf al Qaradawi with his death fatwas for IDF and US soldiers and  ISBCC trustee Abdulrahman Alamoudi who provided terror financing for a hot on a Saudi crown prince and was convicted to serve 23 years here in the US. Then there were a host of terror convictions for attendees at the ISBCC plus the Tsarneav brothers who perpetrated the Boston Marathon finish line bombing, the story of which was recently depicted in Peter Berg’s acclaimed film, “Patriot’s Day”. A USA Today article just after the Patriots Day marathon bombing in Boston on April 23, 2013 that the Boston refugee terrorist and others had either founded or attended the Mosque with radical Islamic ties. The USA Today article, “Mosque that Boston suspects attended had radical ties, “ noted the others:

  • Alamoudi, who signed the articles of incorporation as the Cambridge mosque’s president, was sentenced to 23 years in federal court in Alexandria, Va., in 2004 for his role as a facilitator in what federal prosecutors called a Libyan assassination plot against then-crown prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia. Abdullah is now the Saudi king.
  • Aafia Siddiqui, who occasionally prayed at the Cambridge mosque, was arrested in Afghanistan in 2008 while in possession of cyanide canisters and plans for a chemical attack in New York City. She tried to grab a rifle while in detention and shot at military officers and FBI agents, for which she was convicted in New York in 2010 and is serving an 86-year sentence.
  • Tarek Mehanna, who worshiped at the Cambridge mosque, was sentenced in 2012 to 17 years in prison for conspiring to aid al-Qaeda. Mehanna had traveled to Yemen to seek terrorist training and plotted to use automatic weapons to shoot up a mall in the Boston suburbs, federal investigators in Boston alleged.
  • Ahmad Abousamra, the son of a former vice president of the Muslim American Society Boston Abdul-Badi Abousamra, was identified by the FBI as Mehanna’s co-conspirator. He fled to Syria and is wanted by the FBI on charges of providing support to terrorists and conspiracy to kill Americans in a foreign country.
  • Jamal Badawi of Canada, a former trustee of the Islamic Society of Boston Trust, which owns both mosques, was named as a non-indicted co-conspirator in the 2007 Holy Land Foundation terrorism trial in Texas over the funneling of money to Hamas, which is the Palestinian wing of the Muslim Brotherhood.

Here’s what Jacobs of APT wrote in his rebuttal to the Washington Post Magazine profile of Webb, “Don’t Ignore Webb’s Bigotry”:

When Washington Post reporter Bill Donahue slandered us in a puff piece that whitewashed a bigoted, anti-Semitic imam, we sent a letter to their editor showing that Donahue was duped. Incredibly, the Post published our letter, and even in its online version supplied the links to the imam’s hateful sermons that prove that Donahue was taken for a ride!

Here is the letter:

The lengthy profile of Imam Suhaib Webb, “Show of faith” [Washington Post Magazine, Jan. 22], dismissed my organization’s legitimate criticisms of Webb and his former Boston mosque’s extremism. The article noted we “allege” Webb was anti-Semitic and homophobic but dismissed our research without further consideration.

We do not merely “allege” Webb’s bigotry. We have proved it. Videos of sermons we uncovered show Webb preaching that “effeminate” men are “cursed” and that he “understands” Muslims who “have animosity” toward “the Jews.”

In 2001, according to FBI surveillance documents, Webb appeared alongside al-Qaeda operative Anwar al-Awlaki to raise $100,000 for Jamil Abdullah al-Amin, who was convicted of shooting two U.S. police officers and killing one of them.

And if all this were not enough to discourage a puff piece, Webb also spent three years as the imam of the Islamic Society of Boston. There he was involved with the tarbiya program, an educational course in which radical Islamist texts are taught to youths from Boston’s historically moderate Muslim community.

The Post may paint Webb as the cool Snapchatting imam, but we and our moderate Muslim allies know that beneath the pose, Webb has a history of peddling hate. Boston’s Muslim community was left a lot worse off for his time here. How will the District fare?

Charles Jacobs, Boston

The writer is president of Americans for Peace and Tolerance.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is of Imam Suhaib Webb leading Friday Ju’umah Prayers at Church of the Epiphany, Washington, DC, Pete Marovich , Washington Post.