Frederick Town Board Rejects Mosque Plan

[Kananga]

Frederick Town Board Rejects Mosque Plan

By Philip Rucker
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, February 8, 2008; 11:19 AM

After months of heated debate, the zoning appeals board in Walkersville late last night rejected a proposal by a Silver Spring Muslim sect to build a mosque and retreat facility on a 224-acre farm in the rural Frederick County town.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community's plans to build an Islamic worship center that would host up to 10,000 people annually for a national religious convention stoked intense public outcry in Walkersville, a mostly white hamlet of about 5,000 people nestled near the foothills of the Appalachian Mountains.

But although the proposal stirred religious tensions, the Walkersville Board of Zoning Appeals cited more pedestrian reasons for denying the request, saying the facility would attract too much traffic and threaten the town's water supply. The board's decision came on the third straight day of public deliberation over the proposal.

An attorney for the landowner who was selling his farm to the Muslim group called the board's decision "both irrational and discriminatory."

"This conflict has been defined from day one by a desire to keep a Muslim group out of the area," attorney Roman Storzer said in a statement.

It is unconstitutional to make land-use decisions on religious or racial grounds, so the town could deny the sect's proposal only if it identified legitimate concerns about traffic, infrastructure or planning.

The mosque would have been built on Walkersville's largest farm, once occupied by the town's founding father, John Walker. The colonial-era farm house would have been converted into living space for an imam and other clergy.

David W. Moxley, who owns the farm, said the sect's leaders handled the issue with "patience and grace."

"It's unfortunate that they have had to suffer such hostility at the hands of a vocal opposition intent on keeping them out of Walkersville at all costs," Moxley said in a statement.

The Ahmadiyya community's quest to build in Walkersville was one of the latest examples of local opposition to Muslim groups trying to build facilities to accommodate growing congregations across the nation.

The Ahmadiyya sect is distinct from the larger Sunni and Shiite sects and fled persecution in Pakistan when the government there ruled they were not Muslims.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/02/08/AR2008020801609.html

[Mstislav]

More towns and cities need to start doing more of this. If muzzies want their mosques and pisslamic centres, they can go back to whatever shiiteholes they crawled out from.

[Ben Yehuda]

This is great news. A similar battle is taking place in Hernando county in FL, but this one doesn't look like it will end as well.

Lawyers, like this Storzer piece of garbage, are traitorous criminals who should be disbarred.

[kellymaureen]

  awesome news!
Our city council wont approve it because of the tourism, there arent muslims in niagara falls now, if there are there arent many, so why do they need a mosqe here....to bring more in of course....and how convenient right on the border

[Mstislav]

This is great news. A similar battle is taking place in Hernando county in FL, but this one doesn't look like it will end as well.

Lawyers, like this Storzer piece of garbage, are traitorous criminals who should be disbarred.

That would be like a slap on the wrist. He should be tried for aiding enemy aliens.

[Mstislav]

awesome news!
Our city council wont approve it because of the tourism, there arent muslims in niagara falls now, if there are there arent many, so why do they need a mosqe here....to bring more in of course....and how convenient right on the border

The last thing Canada or the U.S needs is another security threat.

[kellymaureen]

awesome news!
Our city council wont approve it because of the tourism, there arent muslims in niagara falls now, if there are there arent many, so why do they need a mosqe here....to bring more in of course....and how convenient right on the border

The last thing Canada or the U.S needs is another security threat.

Even Niagara Falls Ontario wont allow a mosque lol....they have every other house of worship, even a huge bhuddist temple but no mosque

[Mstislav]

awesome news!
Our city council wont approve it because of the tourism, there arent muslims in niagara falls now, if there are there arent many, so why do they need a mosqe here....to bring more in of course....and how convenient right on the border

The last thing Canada or the U.S needs is another security threat.

Even Niagara Falls Ontario wont allow a mosque lol....they have every other house of worship, even a huge bhuddist temple but no mosque

O0That is good. Now all that needs to be done on both sides is the closing and destruction of any and every islamic institution (schools, centres, mosques, businesses, etc) and the expulsion of muslims.