The Islamic Society of Boston Cultural Center (ISBCC), an institution with documented ties to Muslim extremists, has invited Omar Suleiman, an Islamist imam from Irving, Texas, to speak on its premises on May 17. The publicity for the event indicates that Suleiman will speak at the Roxbury mosque about how Muslims can use their faith to overcome adversity. If history is any indicator, the imam will encourage his audience to view Israel and its supporters as an obstacle to the welfare of Muslims throughout the world.
On this score, Suleiman will follow in the footsteps of Father Charles Coughlin—the notorious antisemitic radio priest in Royal Oak, Mich., who used emerging media to stoke hatred against Jews in the 1930s. Where Coughlin weaponized Catholic theology and broadcast airwaves to demonize Jews as Christ-killers, Bolshevist conspirators and enemies of Christians in Russia, Spain and Mexico, Suleiman leverages YouTube, X and Islamic narratives to cast Israel and Zionists as enemies of Muslims in the Middle East and the rest of the world.
Suleiman has repeatedly accused Israel of “genocide” against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, framing Zionism as inherently murderous while downplaying the murderous actions of Iran and its proxies Hamas and Hezbollah. In one instance, he declared that “the Zionist project is entirely built on Palestinian extermination.”
He has further invoked Quranic references to the Children of Israel to portray contemporary Jews and their allies as treacherous and subject to Divine judgment. Far from condemning the massacre in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023—during which Hamas terrorists murdered 1,200 Israelis, raped women, tortured others and took 251 civilians hostage—Suleiman and his allies treat the events of that day as a catalytic act of “resistance” that advances Muslim unity.
Suleiman opposes the 2020 Abraham Accords and any “normalization” with Israel, portraying Arab leaders who pursue peace with Israel as traitors to the ummah, or global community of Muslim believers. His Yaqeen Institute promotes a vision of revived global Islamic solidarity that prioritizes transnational Islamist identity over integration into Western liberal democracies.
This is not fringe rhetoric. Suleiman boasts more than a million followers across numerous social-media platforms and appeared on a 2025 Israeli government list of the top 10 antisemitic influencers—a designation he celebrated publicly, with his father congratulating him for making the “honor list.”
The parallels to Coughlin are instructive. Coughlin described Kristallnacht as a “defense mechanism” against alleged Jewish wrongdoing. In his writings, he invoked the Passion narrative to paint Jews as eternal enemies to the Mystical Body of Christ. Suleiman mirrors this by portraying Oct. 7 as a reasonable response to Zionist aggression, ignoring numerous offers for statehood turned down by Palestinian leaders over the years.When Muslim institutions amplify such voices, they signal to their communities and to radicals on the left that such views are acceptable and actionable.
Suleiman’s appearance at the ISBCC comes as no surprise. For years, the mosque’s parent organization, the Islamic Society of Boston, listed Yusuf al-Qaradawi—the late spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood and one of the most influential Islamist voices of the modern era—as one of its founding trustees. Qaradawi was no marginal figure. He openly celebrated Adolf Hitler as an instrument of Divine punishment against the Jews and expressed hope that Muslims would finish what the Nazis began.
“Allah willing,” he declared, “the next time will be at the hand of the believers.”
While the ISBCC has tried in recent years to project a moderate facade by platforming Suleiman, the mosque makes it perfectly clear that it cares not one whit about “interfaith relations” or the safety of Jews in Boston.
The event should spark outrage on the part of interfaith leaders and public officials in the city, which sold public land to the ISBCC at a cut rate to promote “diversity” and pluralism. How does the ISBCC repay the city’s generosity? By hosting a speaker who declared in early 2026 that Dr. Miriam Adelson, a prominent American Jew and a longtime philanthropist, “oozes evil.”
Post-Oct. 7, antisemitic attacks in the United States have skyrocketed. Data from the FBI and Anti-Defamation League show record incidents, with synagogues targeted, Jewish students harassed and rhetoric echoing medieval blood libels. Islamist voices like Suleiman’s contribute to this climate by mainstreaming the idea that Zionists (aka, Jews) are uniquely malevolent.
When Muslim institutions amplify such voices, they signal to their communities and to radicals on the left that such views are acceptable and actionable.
This is not the first time such a thing has happened in Roxbury. As documented in Charles R. Gallagher’s Nazis of Copley Square: The Forgotten Story of the Christian Front, Francis Moran, an acolyte of Father Coughlin, delivered venomous speeches at Hibernian Hall in Roxbury, just a few blocks from the ISBCC.
In 1941, Moran falsely accused Jews of shirking combat duty by taking “all the soft jobs in the Quartermaster and Medical Corps,” and claimed that those not in uniform were “cheap chiseling rats” who would profiteer from the war—even at the expense of their own country. Moran went further, alleging without evidence that Jews had sold poisoned food to American troops at military camps.
By platforming Omar Suleiman, the mosque makes it perfectly clear that it cares not one whit about “interfaith relations” or the safety of Jews in the city.
These tirades, delivered to enthusiastic crowds at Hibernian Hall, fueled a surge of antisemitic violence in 1943. Then, Irish Catholic gangs carried out street attacks on Jewish boys, smashed synagogue windows and assaulted Jewish stores in Dorchester, Roxbury and Mattapan.
One especially brutal incident occurred in March 1943 outside the Hecht House in Dorchester, Boston’s first Jewish community center, where eight Jewish boys were set upon after a prearranged signal by five attackers who repeatedly punched one boy in the face after he refused to say that Hitler was the greatest person in the world.
To make matters even more troubling, Suleiman is speaking at a mosque in Roxbury, the very neighborhood where Jews were driven from their homes six decades ago. Blue Hill Avenue, once known for its thriving Jewish population, now contains few, if any, Jews.
In the 1960s and 1970s, a wave of black-on-Jewish street violence, combined with blockbusting tactics, accelerated the Jewish exodus from Roxbury, Dorchester and Mattapan. One of the most notorious incidents occurred in 1969, when Rabbi Gerald Zelermyer of Temple Beth Hillel in Mattapan was attacked in his home. Two black youths rang the rabbi’s doorbell, handed him a note laced with obscenities ordering him to “get out of town” and hurled acid in his face before fleeing.
The Jewish community’s painful departure from these streets adds a bitter historical layer to the ISBCC’s decision to host Suleiman in a place where Jewish safety was once systematically eroded.
Eight decades ago, incendiary speeches in Roxbury helped create a climate in which Jews were beaten in the streets and their institutions vandalized by Irish Catholics. Five decades ago, black antisemitism contributed to an exodos of Jews from the same neighborhood. Now, a prominent Muslim institution is facilitating yet another round of Jew-hatred in Roxbury.
Boston’s political and religious leaders, who are struggling with antisemitism in nearby West Roxbury, must condemn the ISBCC for providing a platform to a man who inflames hostility toward Bostonians they are charged with defending.
