Lilburn City Council rejects plans for mosque

[onehandle]

Source: Atlanta Journal Constitution

Scores of Lilburn residents finally got their wish Wednesday night when the City Council rejected plans for a giant mosque in their neighborhood. "I'm so happy I can't even talk," homeowner Lorraine Lobos said. "Our needs have been answered."

But the decision before a packed crowd of more than 400 people in Lawrenceville isn't expected to end the feud -- and its conflicting themes of faith and future land use. The matter could end up in court.

In a 4-0vote, city leaders denied a rezoning request by the local Muslim congregation of Dar-E-Abbas for a 20,000-square-foot mosque, cemetery and gymnasium on about 8 acres at U.S. 29 and Hood Road. The congregation, which has worshiped there for the past 11 years, was looking to expand to accommodate the city's growing Muslim population. One estimate puts the number of Muslims in metro Atlanta at 80,000.

The council's decision was met by applause by hundreds of residents who wore red to signal they wanted the plans stopped.

Read more: http://www.ajc.com/news/gwinnett/lilburn-city-council-r...

---

Can you guess why this city in a very red Georgia county is so happy?

Can you? Can you?

Well?

A large (and beautiful) Hindu temple opened a couple of years ago. They went Ballistic!

[RubyDuby in GA]

1. Sadly, living in the neighboring county, I know all too well why these assholes are happy

I want out of this state. I'm beyond fed up with teh stoopid!

[CurtEastPoint]

2. They will be shot down. Churches and their ilk have free rein thanks

to the RLUIPA law passed in 2001...

In addition, RLUIPA prohibits zoning and landmarking laws that: (1) treat churches or other religious assemblies or institutions on less than equal terms with nonreligious institutions; (2) discriminate against any assemblies or institutions on the basis of religion or religious denomination; (3) totally exclude religious assemblies from a jurisdiction; or (4) unreasonably limit religious assemblies, institutions, or structures within a jurisdiction.

[onehandle]

4. In the eighties Dekalb and Fulton knuckle-draggers moved out there to...

...escape the African-Americans of Atlanta. Even refusing to pay for the local mass transit system to go there.

What's funny is that Gwinnett has become the melting pot of Georgia. That cracks me up.

(I know you know this. This is for the knowledge of others.)

[hlthe2b]

3. Why did I know this had to be Lilburn, Georgia....

I'm sure there must be towns named Lilburn in other states, but just the subject line had me convinced. Only if it had been in Lawrenceville would this surprise me less....

For all the growth in this part of the Atlanta suburbs, this area seems determined to remain horribly regressive and bigoted.

[onehandle]

5. There is a horrible ring of racists that surround Atlanta.

Sadly, they are the most likely to get to the polls and have killed the Democratic Party in Georgia.

[catzies]

14. My only brother and his family are in Lawrenceville. Sad. I doubt I can bring this up.

We were raised in South Florida, and now I'm a stereotypical Californian (according to him) and he's a stereotypical redneck (according to me). Go figure.

He went to Woodstock as a child of 5 and is now a gun-totin', NASCAR lovin', Fox watchin', McCain votin' bigot. But he's my only sibling and I'm stuck with him.

[imdjh]

6. A congregation of 70 is going to buy a mosque that costs upwards of $3Million?

[snagglepuss]

8. The Saudi's finance many North American mosques so perhaps this is getting

Saudi money.

snip

That North American mosques have been accepting Saudi money for years "is not a secret," says Calgary-based Syed Soharwardy, founder of Muslims Against Terrorism. "This is a very common practice in the Muslim community."

Soharwardy founded the Islamic Supreme Council of Canada in 2000 after
noticing the effect of Saudi funding on Canadian mosques.

"Wherever the mosques get funding from Saudi Arabia," he says, "the imam and the management committee become so centrally focused that they don't believe that anybody else in the Muslim community can be right." That tends to deepen their isolation.

"I disagree with anybody who says that mosques in Canada are breeding
grounds for terrorism or extremism. I don't believe that," Soharwardy says. "But what I'm sure of is that narrow-mindedness and intolerance towards the difference of opinion will lead towards extremism and ultimately terrorism."


In 2004, a task force on terrorist financing sponsored by the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations said Saudi money helped establish 210 Islamic centres and 1,359 mosques worldwide. Citing a Saudi government news release, it said donations included $5 million (U.S.) from King Fahd, the late leader ofSaudi Arabia, for an Islamic centre in Toronto, along with operating funds of $1.5 million annually (The name of the recipient has not been revealed.)

There's nothing unique or illegal about such international gifts.

snip

http://www.mail-archive.com/[e-mail]/msg29...

[imdjh]

9. I love unsupported conclusions. "There's nothing unique or illegal about such international gifts. "

"There's nothing unique or illegal about such international gifts. "

The article makes the unsupported conclusion. But it doesn't offer any examples of another foreign government donating a temple to be built in the US or Canada. You can bet that Italy did not pay for the Shrine Of The Immaculate Conception, nor did the British King pay for the construction of the National Cathedral. Nothing unique?

Perhaps they mean because the Momons build temples in Tonga and Peru, but we have to annoyingly point out that the Mormons are barely Americans, much less the US government or royal family of the US.

[The Stranger]

30. Are you fucking kidding me?

You don't think a foreign nation not only supports, but collects money from every single Catholic Church in the United States?

It's called the Vatican.

(This conspiracy shit trying to tie it to Saudi Arabia and Terrorism smacks of the same racism the news story is trying to expose.)

[boppers]

13. 80,000 potential customers.

This is how mega-church expansion works, as the congregation grows, they build bigger, to attract more customers.

Wait, did I say customers? I meant worshipers.

[Blue_Tires]

24. $3 million isn't an impossible sum to raise from a religious community

and they can get loans, too if needed...

[customerserviceguy]

7. I wouldn't want a Christian church of that scale built in my neighborhood

so does that make me some sort of bigot?

Yes, these are Muslims, but any house of worship of any faith tradition is a traffic nightmare for most places that are not inherently commercial in nature.

[imdjh]

10. Don't be a killjoy. The next thing, you'll be asking our dear outraged fellows where they live....

... and where their children go to school. No white flighters on DU one supposes.

[Flaneur]

15. What are you trying to say?

[customerserviceguy]

16. I figured it out

My parents moved from Gary, Indiana, in the mid 1960's, to a semi-rural area about ten miles south of there. They simply wanted to be able to buy a home in a nice neighborhood with good schools, and they went at the same time that "white flight" was occurring.

I was surrounded by people who used every racial epithet in the book, and even though my parents took great pains to "correct" me on the garbage thinking that sometimes got expressed out of my mouth, some would say that they contributed to "white flight" rather than stay in Gary and fight for equality by doing so.

It's often difficult to separate motives from actions.

[imdjh]

21. The good white flighters. Buzz Words of the past and present: Good schools, safe neighborhood.

White flight isn't simply "fear" of black people, because in the first wave there was no fear of black people. After WWII, white people moved to the suburbs because they could, because cars and roads had improved, because houses were being built, and because white people to a greater extent than blacks could take advantage of GI BILL programs for education, jobs, and mortgages, because the suburbs permitted white people to live in the new housing developments.

The next wave of white flighters comes with school desegregation. This would be the wave for which the "fear of black people" might apply, though at the time there still was no actual fear of black people, because white neighborhoods and police departments kept the two apart to some degree.

1970 and court ordered bussing generated the last wave of white flight. To reduce this to fear of black people is to ignore a great deal of economic and social upheaval going on which threatened the well being of the white suburbanite. These people did not uproot and walk away from mortgages or sell houses at a loss because they were irrational racists. They did this for their physical safety and economic survival. Many of the neighborhoods they abanadoned are now notorious suburban ghettoes, others have turned into what passes for a black middle class, and still others have come full circle. But to label this group of people as some kind of ignorant hysteric is to be rather smug and a whole lot ignorant.

They simply wanted to be able to buy a home in a nice neighborhood with good schools, and they went at the same time that "white flight" was occurring.

Hate to burst your bubble, but that is the definition of white flight. "Good schools" just happen to be the ones that are (more than pick a percentage higher than 60%) white. "Good neighborhood" or "Safe neighborhood" just happens to be all or major majority white neighborhood.

Now you can try to defend you parents or define them out, but it won't change what they did, and what they did doesn't need defending: they were taking care of their kids. Which is exactly what nice people we meet every day, that we might talk to on DU every day, have done. There is no need to defend trying to get your kids to someplace that is safer and where schools are better. But to act like it's simply an unintended coincidence that that neighborhood is whiter while accusing an entire generation of ignorance and malice is nothing short of ignorance and Hypocrisy.

[customerserviceguy]

27. They simply couldn't afford a house in Gary

and that was the case when my ex and I left Seattle back in 1979 for a place about forty miles north of it. Frankly, in the case of my folks, they were a bit sad that I had to go to public school, they had enrolled me in Catholic school back in Gary.

[Blue_Tires]

17. having lived in Atlanta, stadium-size megachurches are as common as gas stations

and I would bet dollars to yen that the nearest 80,000 sq ft church can't be too far from the proposed site...Also amusing is that this is the city and surrounding counties that for two decades set the template on unchecked, chaotic, runaway growth, and all of a sudden residents are conscious environmentalists concerned with traffic, stormwater drainage and parking???

I still don't believe I just read that story...GWINNETT FUCKING COUNTY (where there is hardly an undeveloped patch of green left) of all places is halting the expansion of a developed site... The mosque will almost certainly go to court and win...

[onehandle]

18. All exactly right. This is about hatred. Gwinnett county is an overdeveloped crap hole.

If this had been a megachurch or a mega Wal-Mart, people would have shrugged.

[imdjh]

22. So since I hate megachurches, and rarely miss an op to sneer, why can't I hate megamosques too?

[Blue_Tires]

25. hate both if you like

and please save some hatred for the Gwinnett Co. planners who decided to be some hypocritical jerkoffs...

[onehandle]

19. In this case it is purely about hate.

The county it would be in has no history of concern for development or traffic.

Another poster put it really well in #17.

[CatWoman]

11. I ride by there quite a bit

and I was shocked to see it, #1.

I mean, come on now. I couldn't believe the locals didn't burn it down.

and #2 - every time I see it I marvel at its beauty.

[pennylane100]

12. I do not know the neighborhood, and I am an atheist,

so I would be very disturbed if any church/synagogue/temple/mosque wanted to build a complex in my neighborhood, unless it did not upset the flow of traffic and there was enough parking and, this is very important, there was no rave parties with illegal drug use that I was not invited to.

However, in all seriousness, we have to respect zoning laws for those of us who do not want exceptions made for religious buildings. However, we must be sure that we deny them because they do not comply with the zoning laws, and not because the we do not approve of the religion. As I do no approve of any religious organization, I would disallow them all.

[RubyDuby in GA]

20. From one fellow atheist to another -

I live in the neighboring county and this is completely about anti-Muslim hatred. The Gwinnett Planning Commission would go out of its way to change zoning laws if it were a Christian mega church that wanted to build there.

[imdjh]

23. IS it anti-muslim or anti-immigrant? The congregation looked Asian.

[RubyDuby in GA]

26. It's both. To the lilly-whites - there is no difference.

[pennylane100]

29. Well that is clearly wrong,

however, my dislike of religion makes me not care as much as I should. I think I would feel better if it were a more modern religion where women do not have to sit at the back and can walk in without being covered from head to toe but I know that is not the point/

the one thing that pisses me off is that churches do not pay taxes which means we subsidise them.
i wish we could find a way sto start a pub and call it a church so we would game the system just like they do.

[Sultana]

28. Good

[mopinko]

31. this will be struck down, but.

a similar imbroglio in the chicago suburbs went all the way to the supreme court. iirc, the zoning was struck down, but the mosque ended up settling with the town to build elsewhere anyway.
i concur with others here who think it would be nice if churches had to follow the same rules as everyone else. but zoning changes are made all the time. not only would they have made changes for a christian church that wanted this, they would have made them for a walmart.