Boston's new Mosque and Cultural Center was meant to be a beacon of tolerance, a symbol of understanding between Muslims and non-Muslims. Instead, the unfinished red-brick shell at Roxbury Crossing has become just the opposite.
Conceived before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and blessed by the city, the mosque has been beset by challenges. A Mission Hill man is suing the city, alleging that the land deal that got the project underway was unfair. Others have accused officials of the Cambridge-based Islamic Society of Boston, which is building the mosque, of sympathizing with Islamic extremists.
The accusations have battered the project. Donations have slowed to a trickle and Islamic society officials blame the allegations of extremism, which they have vehemently denied, for deterring benefactors. The funding difficulties have all but halted construction and forced the society to seek bank loans to complete the project, a step they had long hoped to avoid, given Islam's prohibition on charging and paying interest. However, those loans were denied, society officials said.
Mosque supporters say the harm done goes beyond bricks and mortar, that the rancor surrounding the project has deepened suspicions between Muslims and non-Muslims. The Roxbury site has become a setting for conflicts that extend far outside the neighborhood, into issues of constitutional rights, Middle East politics, and national security.
''One of the major objectives of this project was to be interaction between Muslims and non-Muslims in recognition that there is a lot of misunderstanding among Americans about Islam, and quite frankly among Muslims about American culture and society," said Salma Kazmi, assistant director of the Islamic Society of Boston. ''This feeds a lot of resentment and mistrust, the sense of people generally being against us. It's not a healthy environment."
The original completion date for the mosque was November 2004. The project has faced so many delays since then that mosque officials are reluctant to set a new completion date. With each month of delay, construction costs have risen, swelling the budget for the project from an original estimate of $22 million to around $24.5 million, and putting the new mosque's first day of prayers further from reach.
Workers are installing windows in the Roxbury building, to seal it up for the winter. But advancing further is going to be difficult without new funding.
Donors who might have given to the Islamic Society of Boston before the allegations arose are directing their charity elsewhere, Kazmi said.
''Given a choice between sending a check to an organization that has been labeled as supporting terrorists, and doing something that is perceived as safer, I think it's simply a matter of logic," Kazmi said. ''A person would choose just not to get involved with something they sense is controversial."
The attempt to get loans, which Kazmi described as ''a last resort," also failed. A spokeswoman for Bank of America refused to comment on the loan request, citing privacy considerations. Others close to the construction project said the suit challenging the land deal led banks to deny the loans.
In October, Islamic Society officials filed a lawsuit because of media reports and statements by various groups linking mosque officials to terrorist groups. The defendants include The Boston Herald, WFXT-TV (Channel 25), the David Project, a pro-Israel group, and Steven Emerson, a specialist on terrorism. In the suit, the Islamic Society vehemently denies any connection to radical Islam. The suit alleges that the David Project, reporters, and others joined together ''in a concerted, well-coordinated effort to deprive . . . members of the Boston-area Muslim community of their basic rights of free association and the free exercise of their religion" under the Constitution.
The David Project counters that it is the Islamic Society of Boston that is interfering with constitutional rights, by seeking to stifle questions about public statements by some of its past and present officials, which the David Project describes as anti-Israel and pro-extremist.
''From our perspective, this is an attempt by the Islamic Society of Boston to essentially intimidate those who have asked questions about the leadership into not asking them anymore," said Jeff Robbins, a lawyer for the David Project.
A spokeswoman for WFXT and a spokeswoman for the Herald said they stand by their stories.
The Islamic Society also contends that a suit filed in November 2004 by Mission Hill resident James C. Policastro was part of a conspiracy to stop the mosque. Policastro's suit alleges that deal reached in 2000 by the society and the Boston Redevelopment Authority that provided the land for the mosque allowed the society to purchase the land too cheaply. That, Policastro's suit alleges, violated constitutional provisions prohibiting government from unfairly assisting religious institutions.
Under the 2000 deal, the Islamic Society of Boston bought the Roxbury land, valued at $401,187, for $175,000. The remainder was to be paid in kind: the Islamic Society was to maintain a playground and park by the Roxbury parcel for 10 years, offer lectures on Islam at Roxbury Community College next door, help develop an Islamic library there, and assist the college foundation in fund-raising.
Mosque supporters describe the efforts to link mosque officials to Islamic radicalism as intolerance at best, a witch hunt at worst.
But Robbins said the Islamic Society of Boston's suit is ''McCarthyist," because it is trying to ''pulverize people by labeling them conspirators when all they have done is to speak up."
This month, Robbins sent a letter to Boston City Councilor Jerry P. McDermott, urging him to hold an inquiry into the land deal because one of the men who founded the Islamic Society of Boston in the early 1980s, Abdurahman Alamoudi, raised money in the United States for groups that support Al Qaeda, according to the US Department of the Treasury.
The Islamic Society of Boston has tried to answer its critics, Kazmi said. The society rejects extremism, she said. Alamoudi, who is in prison in Saudi Arabia, has had no association with the society for years. Every person on the mosque's donor list has been checked against the Treasury Department's list of ''blocked persons," people who are forbidden to make donations to American institutions because of terrorist or criminal connections. Those who made large donations were researched more thoroughly, she said.
In addition, the Islamic Society has good relations with the FBI, Kazmi said.
''I'm not aware that any formal charges have been brought against anybody at the mosque, said Gail Marcinkiewicz, spokeswoman for the FBI in Boston.
Marcinkiewicz said in an earlier interview that the agency does not speak publicly about groups that it meets with but that federal agents maintain a ''free flow of information" with local Muslim organizations.
The difficulties surrounding the project have raised concerns among Muslims in the area, who thought the new mosque was to have symbolized ''the Muslim community coming into its own in Boston and in Massachusetts," said Hamza Pelletier, a Muslim political activist.
''While some people might say there is a constitutional backing for what they're doing, it seems that it's more a front for people [who want] to disrupt the progress of the Muslim community in Boston," Pelletier said.
The mosque project is significant not just to members of the Islamic Society, but to tens of thousands of other Muslims who have migrated to Massachusetts from Nigeria, Somalia, Morocco, and elsewhere during the 20 years since the idea of building a major mosque was conceived.
''Each community is trying to find its own space, a place to call its center, but we also are all one community," said Imam Taalib Mahdee of Masjid al-Quran in Roxbury, a predominantly African-American mosque that has participated in fund-raising and other support activities for the new facility.
Many local Muslims have been worshipping in the Islamic Society's overcrowded mosque in Cambridge, and in other smaller mosques, or borrowing space from other houses of worship around the city. The new mosque was designed to offer space for 2,000, and includes an area for the ritual washing of the dead, a library, and social programs.
''Muslims are very upset," said Mushtaque Mirza, an Indian Muslim who has been active in the community for 30 years. ''Muslims finally had a feeling this is really a mosque, with a dome structure, a minaret. Anybody would feel it's discrimination that when it comes to the mosque, it is always depicted as [supporting] terrorism."
Despite the turmoil in which they now find themselves, many in the Islamic community say they are confident the mosque will eventually be completed.
''I am confident that whenever there is a peaceful project like this, it will be in God's hands, and it will work out." said Shaza Fadel, a scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital who has been active in the city's Muslim community.
But the Islamic Society may have sustained damage that will continue long after the Roxbury mosque opens its doors, Kazmi said.
''You have second and third generations of American Muslims coming into their own, and we would like to see those people take leadership roles in the organization, for the healthy assimilation of the community into mainstream society," she said. ''But the reports make that very difficult, because it becomes embarrassing to be associated with an institution that has a cloud over it like ours has."
Charles A. Radin of the Globe staff contributed to this report. Yvonne Abraham can be reached at abraham@globe.com. Stephen Kurkjian can be reached at kurkjian@globe.com.