DOJ’s litigation jihad against officials who dare deny massive mosque expansions

Posted on August 16, 2011 by creeping

The Wall Street Journal is now writing about what we’ve covered several times. That is the Dept. of Islamic Justice’s aggressive defense of Islam and mosques across the U.S. Which appears to be official or unofficial policy at the DOJ.

Mosque Zoning Row Draws Scrutiny – WSJ.com.

LILBURN, Ga.—A mosque dispute in this Atlanta suburb is shining a spotlight on an antidiscrimination law increasingly pitting the Department of Justice against zoning officials across the country.

Lilburn’s city council plans to vote Tuesday whether to allow construction of a 20,000-square-foot Muslim worship center between a large Baptist church and a Hindu temple on a busy thoroughfare also lined with gas stations and strip malls.

The city council rejected zoning applications in 2009 and again last year for the center amid stiff opposition from some residents, who say the large mosque would bring too much traffic and noise and encroach on the neighborhood behind it.

“It’s not about religion,” said Rowann Wilkerson, 62 years old, who owns a local antique store.

Muslims currently praying in a dilapidated 2,000-square-foot house at the contested site say Lilburn is singling out Islam. The First Baptist Church of Lilburn down the road has been allowed to expand over the years from a small log cabin into an estimated 100,000-square-foot complex.

“We have a right to grow. This is a fundamental right in the U.S.,” said Wasi Zaidi, co-founder of Dar-e-Abbas, the local Shiite congregation that wants to build the mosque.

The Justice Department is investigating if Lilburn violated the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act by rejecting the zoning applications. The 11-year-old federal law prohibits local authorities from imposing “a substantial burden” on religious groups or treating them “on less than equal terms” than other groups in land-use decisions.

Officials in Lilburn, population 11,596, are already defending themselves in a suit Dar-e-Abbas itself filed under the law in federal court in 2009.

Bill Johnsa, the city manager, said the application was being treated as a zoning issue and that Lilburn welcomes all cultures. A lawyer for the city said Lilburn was “always amenable to looking at all possible solutions” in its dispute with Dar-e-Abbas.

The Justice Department is diving into such religious disputes more aggressively. Last week it reached a settlement in a suit it filed against Walnut, Calif., which had denied a building permit for a Buddhist house of worship. The city agreed to ease religious zoning restrictions.

But much of the activity concerns mosques. In a report last year, the Department said mosques, as well as synagogues and African-American churches, were “particularly vulnerable” to discriminatory zoning. Of its 26 probes of possible Religious Land Use violations involving mosques in the past decade, 16 were launched in the past 15 months.

Lilburn is re-examining the Dar-e-Abbas application after the department recently warned it was preparing its own suit against the city under the act, according to people familiar with the matter. A department spokeswoman would confirm only that its investigation was continuing.

“It’s kind of handcuffed us,” said Lilburn council member Eddie Price of the probe.

The dispute has surfaced amid a rapid shift in Lilburn’s demographics. The percentage of the population that is white fell to 52.7% in the most recent census, from more than 90% two decades ago. Dar-e-Abbas says its congregation has risen to 90 families from 20 since 1998. Many are immigrants from India and Pakistan.

City council member Scott Batterton voted for the plan last December and intends to do so again, noting that other religious groups have been accommodated in Lilburn. “It may well cost me the election, but I think it’s the right thing,” said Mr. Batterton, who faces voters in November.

The right thing to ignore your constituents and their concerns to appease the minority? Vote wisely.

Where was Eric Holder and the DOJ when Muslims threatened those who opposed the mosque forcing around the clock police protection in the once quiet area? By the way, the Lilburn mosque is a replica of a shrine to a Muslim holy warrior in Iraq (where more than 4,000 U.S. soldiers have been killed).

Related:

• Georgia: Holder’s DOJ intervenes on behalf of another mosque
• Georgia: Zoning law changed to allow Muslim cemetery in residential area
• Atlanta: Mosque plan fails zoning, Muslims file federal lawsuit
• Atlanta-area mayor to sell personal land for mosque – shrine to Islamic warrior?
• Georgia: An Islamic diaspora grows in Lilburn

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