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Junior News Editor
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/ne...3B0231E5D23B788A8625731A0013A987?OpenDocument
. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/16/2007
Imam Muhamed Hasic talks to a group of worshipers recently at the Islamic Community Center in St. Louis. In April, the St. Louis County Council rejected a request by a group of Bosnian Muslims to build a mosque in Lemay. A local Jewish group has also joined in to help.
(Huy Richard Mach/P-D)
When Rick Isserman found out last month that St. Louis County wouldn't allow a group of Muslims to build a new mosque in south St. Louis County, the story sounded too familiar.
Forty-eight years earlier, Isserman's grandfather, Rabbi Ferdand Isserman, fought to move his congregation, Temple Israel, from the city to the county, where the Jewish population had been relocating for some years. The city of Creve Coeur cited zoning problems and tried to block the move, but the rabbi and his flock took the case to the Missouri Supreme Court and prevailed.
The case, Congregation Temple Israel v. City of Creve Coeur, produced what is considered a landmark religious-freedom decision that says Missouri municipalities can invoke only health or safety issues in denying a religious group the zoning required to build houses of worship.
In the spring, the St. Louis County Council refused the Islamic Community Center's request to rezone a 4.7-acre parcel it bought a year before for $1.25 million. The Muslims — mostly Bosnian immigrants — planned to build a second mosque and community center in addition to the current mosque and center off South Kingshighway in St. Louis.
When Khalid Shah, a member of the mosque and a friend of Isserman's, told him about the council's decision, the 53-year-old Department of Agriculture employee began making the connection to his family's legal legacy.
"I'm fighting the same battle as my grandfather 50 years ago," Isserman said. "It's a different community and a different place, but it's the same issue." YEAH, INVASION AND CONQUER
A county attorney brushed off notions that the dispute is rooted in dramatic constitutional questions of religious freedom. Robert Grant said the council took up a more mundane question of municipal pragmatism in choosing to reject the county planning commission's unanimous support.
"They didn't think it was appropriate zoning," he said.
But for many in the Bosnian community — at 50,000 strong and thought to be the country's largest — the council's 4-3 vote represents an effort to hinder the traditional American immigrant march toward assimilation. Imam Muhamed Hasic, the spiritual leader and president of the Islamic Community Center, also called Madina Masjid, said about half of St. Louis's Bosnian population has moved from the city to south St. Louis County.
"That's where the Bosnians are moving," Isserman said. "It's only natural to make a religious institution accessible to its congregants."
BIAS OR NOT?
After prayers at Madina Masjid, Omer Durakoiec, 44, said the council's vote was :lol:.
"Freedom of religion, if it's for a church or for a mosque, is the same thing," he said. NO IT ISN'T.
But the charge of discrimination is contentious, even among Bosnians.
"In my opinion this was not religious discrimination," said Sukrija Dzidzovic, publisher and editor of Sabah, a Bosnian-American weekly newspaper based in St. Louis. "This was a mistake on Imam Hasic's part. He should not have bought land that was zoned for commercial use, hoping that he could change the zoning."
An existing south St. Louis County mosque, the Bosnian Islamic Center of St. Louis, bought a building on Lemay Ferry Road just a couple of miles from the site in question. Imam Enver Kunic, the spiritual leader of the Bosnian Islamic Center of St. Louis, said that he has no problems with the County Council and that services at the building-turned-mosque will begin in the fall.
County Councilman John Campisi, who represents the area where the mosque and community center would be built, opposes the rezoning. He said the council's vote did not reflect religious discrimination.
"There's one just like it in Lemay, so it's not like the county is against these going in," he said. "But there were so many people calling in who were against it."
Campisi said his office received about 60 phone calls from constituents complaining of potential traffic issues.
"This was going to be a day-care center, a youth center — it was going to be around the clock," he said.
high legal bar
The case exemplifies the frustrations of many new immigrants, especially Muslims, who come to the United States with high expectations for religious freedom and then run into the realities of local politics and what many perceive as the prejudices of their new neighbors.
Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, said local governments that take on religious groups in court are often surprised by how much protection those groups are afforded. AS LONG AS THEY'RE NON-CHRISTIAN
"A lot of government officials don't believe it's as tough as it is, then they go to court and find out," he said. "It doesn't sound like the county has much of a chance prevailing here."
A 2000 federal law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, has given religious groups more legal power, Haynes said.
"It forces governments to work harder before they say no," he said. "Many local governments don't realize there's a higher bar when a religious group is involved."
After a failed attempt at mediation in May, the Islamic Community Center sued the council. Because of pending litigation, Campisi said he would not answer questions about his reasons for rejecting the rezoning request.
When Campisi voted against the rezoning on April 24, he persuaded his two Republican colleagues on the council to join him. Council Chairman Mark O'Mara, a Democrat who voted with the three Republicans, provided the swing vote to defeat the rezoning. O'Mara did not return several phone calls.
Gregory Quinn, another councilman who voted against the rezoning, also cited the litigation and declined to comment. Colleen Wasinger, the third Republican on the council, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The three Democrats on the council said there was little discussion about the issue before the vote and said they were surprised by the final outcome. The minutes of the meeting indicate there was no public debate before the vote.
Temple Israel's rabbi, Mark Shook, who has worked with Hasic to try and get the council to reverse its decision, said Campisi might be wary of rezoning a piece of property that had guaranteed tax income.
"When someone takes a piece of commercial property out of the tax rolls, he is striking at the county's bottom line," he said. "But the underlying philosophy in giving tax breaks to religious institutions is that they better the community. That's the price you pay."
For the Bosnian Muslim community, the issue began in February with a victory. That's when the county's planning commission voted 8-0 to approve rezoning of the land that would be used for the 25,000-square-foot mosque and community center. The parcel is directly across from Lemay Plaza, a 160,000-square-foot strip mall anchored by a 70,000-square-foot Dierbergs grocery. To the west, the land abuts a residential neighborhood of single-family homes.
The Muslims' property had been approved for a 60,000-square-foot motorcycle dealership and a 5,000-square-foot fast-food restaurant. The owners of the dealership sold the land to the Muslim group last year.
In its report, the county's planning commission said rezoning the property from commercial to residential to accommodate the mosque made sense for the area.
"The proposed community center will also be less intense, and therefore more compatible with the adjacent single-family residences, than the uses currently authorized on this site," the report says.
Three weeks earlier, a public hearing drew seven neighbors; only one objected to the plans.
"You can understand when there are objections to a plot of land going from residential to commercial," Shook said. "But when someone wants to upgrade the zoning from commercial to residential and the council objects to that, people start wrinkling their noses."
Grant said the vote against the mosque simply reflects a disagreement.
"The planning commission made (its) recommendation, and the County Council didn't follow it," he said.
Gail Choate, the county manager for planning, said it's rare for the council to disregard the recommendations of the planning commission. The commission has issued an average of about 100 zoning petitions a year since 2005, and the council followed all but a couple of recommendations each year.
JOINT EFFORT
Shah and Isserman spoke in June about the case at a monthly study group they started, in which about a dozen area Muslims and a dozen members of Temple Israel read and discuss the Quran and the Torah. Isserman enlisted Shook's help, as well as congregation president David Weinstein's, and the three men began mobilizing support for the Bosnian Islamic Community Center.
Hasic said he was moved when he heard that Temple Israel was going to bat for the mosque.
"They kept asking what they could do to help," he said. "They wrote letters, they met with the council, they said we needed to stick together."
YEAH, AND STICK IT TO US.
Shook, a former chairman of the Interfaith Partnership, sent a letter to County Council members asking them to reconsider the mosque's rezoning request and citing the Missouri Supreme Court ruling that bears his congregation's name.
In May 1954, Temple Israel bought 24 acres in Creve Coeur, but two months later, the city amended its zoning to make it impossible for the synagogue to secure the necessary permits to build. Temple Israel, led by Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman, sued the city, and five years later the state Supreme Court said Creve Coeur's zoning amendment was unconstitutional.
Haynes, the scholar at the First Amendment Center, said the mosque's fight is similar to many around the country.
"It's usually masked as something else — a zoning issue or parking," he said. "No one wants to come out and say they don't want people of a particular faith in their neighborhood."
But on Banister Road, immediately adjacent to the Bosnians' land, only one of a dozen homeowners expressed any concern at the prospect of Muslim neighbors.
"It wouldn't bother me," said Mamie King, who had a statue of the Virgin Mary in her front yard.
Grace Green, a Pentecostal who described herself as "a holy roller," said she would like to know more about the group, "but you have to love your neighbors."
ttownsend@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8221
http://images.stltoday.com/stltoday/resources/mosquerequest315.jpg
. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
07/16/2007
Imam Muhamed Hasic talks to a group of worshipers recently at the Islamic Community Center in St. Louis. In April, the St. Louis County Council rejected a request by a group of Bosnian Muslims to build a mosque in Lemay. A local Jewish group has also joined in to help.
(Huy Richard Mach/P-D)
When Rick Isserman found out last month that St. Louis County wouldn't allow a group of Muslims to build a new mosque in south St. Louis County, the story sounded too familiar.
Forty-eight years earlier, Isserman's grandfather, Rabbi Ferdand Isserman, fought to move his congregation, Temple Israel, from the city to the county, where the Jewish population had been relocating for some years. The city of Creve Coeur cited zoning problems and tried to block the move, but the rabbi and his flock took the case to the Missouri Supreme Court and prevailed.
The case, Congregation Temple Israel v. City of Creve Coeur, produced what is considered a landmark religious-freedom decision that says Missouri municipalities can invoke only health or safety issues in denying a religious group the zoning required to build houses of worship.
In the spring, the St. Louis County Council refused the Islamic Community Center's request to rezone a 4.7-acre parcel it bought a year before for $1.25 million. The Muslims — mostly Bosnian immigrants — planned to build a second mosque and community center in addition to the current mosque and center off South Kingshighway in St. Louis.
When Khalid Shah, a member of the mosque and a friend of Isserman's, told him about the council's decision, the 53-year-old Department of Agriculture employee began making the connection to his family's legal legacy.
"I'm fighting the same battle as my grandfather 50 years ago," Isserman said. "It's a different community and a different place, but it's the same issue." YEAH, INVASION AND CONQUER
A county attorney brushed off notions that the dispute is rooted in dramatic constitutional questions of religious freedom. Robert Grant said the council took up a more mundane question of municipal pragmatism in choosing to reject the county planning commission's unanimous support.
"They didn't think it was appropriate zoning," he said.
But for many in the Bosnian community — at 50,000 strong and thought to be the country's largest — the council's 4-3 vote represents an effort to hinder the traditional American immigrant march toward assimilation. Imam Muhamed Hasic, the spiritual leader and president of the Islamic Community Center, also called Madina Masjid, said about half of St. Louis's Bosnian population has moved from the city to south St. Louis County.
"That's where the Bosnians are moving," Isserman said. "It's only natural to make a religious institution accessible to its congregants."
BIAS OR NOT?
After prayers at Madina Masjid, Omer Durakoiec, 44, said the council's vote was :lol:.
"Freedom of religion, if it's for a church or for a mosque, is the same thing," he said. NO IT ISN'T.
But the charge of discrimination is contentious, even among Bosnians.
"In my opinion this was not religious discrimination," said Sukrija Dzidzovic, publisher and editor of Sabah, a Bosnian-American weekly newspaper based in St. Louis. "This was a mistake on Imam Hasic's part. He should not have bought land that was zoned for commercial use, hoping that he could change the zoning."
An existing south St. Louis County mosque, the Bosnian Islamic Center of St. Louis, bought a building on Lemay Ferry Road just a couple of miles from the site in question. Imam Enver Kunic, the spiritual leader of the Bosnian Islamic Center of St. Louis, said that he has no problems with the County Council and that services at the building-turned-mosque will begin in the fall.
County Councilman John Campisi, who represents the area where the mosque and community center would be built, opposes the rezoning. He said the council's vote did not reflect religious discrimination.
"There's one just like it in Lemay, so it's not like the county is against these going in," he said. "But there were so many people calling in who were against it."
Campisi said his office received about 60 phone calls from constituents complaining of potential traffic issues.
"This was going to be a day-care center, a youth center — it was going to be around the clock," he said.
high legal bar
The case exemplifies the frustrations of many new immigrants, especially Muslims, who come to the United States with high expectations for religious freedom and then run into the realities of local politics and what many perceive as the prejudices of their new neighbors.
Charles Haynes, a senior scholar at the First Amendment Center, said local governments that take on religious groups in court are often surprised by how much protection those groups are afforded. AS LONG AS THEY'RE NON-CHRISTIAN
"A lot of government officials don't believe it's as tough as it is, then they go to court and find out," he said. "It doesn't sound like the county has much of a chance prevailing here."
A 2000 federal law, the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, has given religious groups more legal power, Haynes said.
"It forces governments to work harder before they say no," he said. "Many local governments don't realize there's a higher bar when a religious group is involved."
After a failed attempt at mediation in May, the Islamic Community Center sued the council. Because of pending litigation, Campisi said he would not answer questions about his reasons for rejecting the rezoning request.
When Campisi voted against the rezoning on April 24, he persuaded his two Republican colleagues on the council to join him. Council Chairman Mark O'Mara, a Democrat who voted with the three Republicans, provided the swing vote to defeat the rezoning. O'Mara did not return several phone calls.
Gregory Quinn, another councilman who voted against the rezoning, also cited the litigation and declined to comment. Colleen Wasinger, the third Republican on the council, did not return phone calls seeking comment.
The three Democrats on the council said there was little discussion about the issue before the vote and said they were surprised by the final outcome. The minutes of the meeting indicate there was no public debate before the vote.
Temple Israel's rabbi, Mark Shook, who has worked with Hasic to try and get the council to reverse its decision, said Campisi might be wary of rezoning a piece of property that had guaranteed tax income.
"When someone takes a piece of commercial property out of the tax rolls, he is striking at the county's bottom line," he said. "But the underlying philosophy in giving tax breaks to religious institutions is that they better the community. That's the price you pay."
For the Bosnian Muslim community, the issue began in February with a victory. That's when the county's planning commission voted 8-0 to approve rezoning of the land that would be used for the 25,000-square-foot mosque and community center. The parcel is directly across from Lemay Plaza, a 160,000-square-foot strip mall anchored by a 70,000-square-foot Dierbergs grocery. To the west, the land abuts a residential neighborhood of single-family homes.
The Muslims' property had been approved for a 60,000-square-foot motorcycle dealership and a 5,000-square-foot fast-food restaurant. The owners of the dealership sold the land to the Muslim group last year.
In its report, the county's planning commission said rezoning the property from commercial to residential to accommodate the mosque made sense for the area.
"The proposed community center will also be less intense, and therefore more compatible with the adjacent single-family residences, than the uses currently authorized on this site," the report says.
Three weeks earlier, a public hearing drew seven neighbors; only one objected to the plans.
"You can understand when there are objections to a plot of land going from residential to commercial," Shook said. "But when someone wants to upgrade the zoning from commercial to residential and the council objects to that, people start wrinkling their noses."
Grant said the vote against the mosque simply reflects a disagreement.
"The planning commission made (its) recommendation, and the County Council didn't follow it," he said.
Gail Choate, the county manager for planning, said it's rare for the council to disregard the recommendations of the planning commission. The commission has issued an average of about 100 zoning petitions a year since 2005, and the council followed all but a couple of recommendations each year.
JOINT EFFORT
Shah and Isserman spoke in June about the case at a monthly study group they started, in which about a dozen area Muslims and a dozen members of Temple Israel read and discuss the Quran and the Torah. Isserman enlisted Shook's help, as well as congregation president David Weinstein's, and the three men began mobilizing support for the Bosnian Islamic Community Center.
Hasic said he was moved when he heard that Temple Israel was going to bat for the mosque.
"They kept asking what they could do to help," he said. "They wrote letters, they met with the council, they said we needed to stick together."
YEAH, AND STICK IT TO US.
Shook, a former chairman of the Interfaith Partnership, sent a letter to County Council members asking them to reconsider the mosque's rezoning request and citing the Missouri Supreme Court ruling that bears his congregation's name.
In May 1954, Temple Israel bought 24 acres in Creve Coeur, but two months later, the city amended its zoning to make it impossible for the synagogue to secure the necessary permits to build. Temple Israel, led by Rabbi Ferdinand Isserman, sued the city, and five years later the state Supreme Court said Creve Coeur's zoning amendment was unconstitutional.
Haynes, the scholar at the First Amendment Center, said the mosque's fight is similar to many around the country.
"It's usually masked as something else — a zoning issue or parking," he said. "No one wants to come out and say they don't want people of a particular faith in their neighborhood."
But on Banister Road, immediately adjacent to the Bosnians' land, only one of a dozen homeowners expressed any concern at the prospect of Muslim neighbors.
"It wouldn't bother me," said Mamie King, who had a statue of the Virgin Mary in her front yard.
Grace Green, a Pentecostal who described herself as "a holy roller," said she would like to know more about the group, "but you have to love your neighbors."
ttownsend@post-dispatch.com | 314-340-8221
http://images.stltoday.com/stltoday/resources/mosquerequest315.jpg
