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Thursday, Apri l 28, 2011
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NJ mosque provokes discrimination debate Islamic group claims town altered zoning laws in example of anti-Muslim legislation Associated Press NEWARK— An Islamic group has sued a suburban town it says engaged in religious discrimination by abruptly changing zoning regulations to prevent the opening of a mosque. Members of the Al Falah Center and local residents filed suit Tuesday in federal court in Trenton against Bridgewater Township’s mayor, council and planning officials. The lawsuit says the sudden zoning changes thwarted plans the group had been working on, with the township’s knowledge, to convert a closed banquet hall in a mostly residential area into a mosque and community center. It accuses town officials of bowing to pressure from protesters and an antimosque Internet campaign. The Bridgewater protests were reminiscent of opposition to an Islamic center and mosque planned in New York City near the World Trade Center site. Developers have envisioned an Islamic center, a large health club, a day care center and a cultural gallery built over a subterranean mosque just blocks
from where Islamic extremists used hijacked The lawsuit claims the site plan, with airplanes to destroy the twin towers and kill details of available parking and other thousands of people on Sept. 11, 2001. requirements, was discussed with the town Supporters say allowing the center to be planning board, but the first public hearing built would reflect American values of toler- on the application had to be adjourned ance and religious freedom, while opponents because so many protesters showed up, argue locating a mosque so close to the attack site would be insensitive to the victims’ memories. The Al Falah Center, according to court papers, is a nonprofit group formed by local Muslim residents of different ethnicities, backgrounds and professions who said they had been renting out various locations around Bridgewater for 10 years as they searched for a suitable place to build a permanent mosque to serve – Islamic lawsuit Muslims in and around the central on discrimination of opening mosque New Jersey suburb. The center members found a closed former inn with a large banquet hall exceeding the venue’s capacity. on more than 7.5 acres of land that was “What should have been an uncomplicatzoned for “permitted conditional use” for ed approval of the application then houses of worship, and they drew up plans foundered in a storm of anti-Muslim sentito renovate it into a mosque, day care facili- ment and hysteria,” the lawsuit says. ty, religious school and community center. Town officials voted to change the rules
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for houses of worship, prohibiting them in residential zones unless they fronted on state highways, court papers say. The ruling affected only the mosque, the suit says, as 17 existing religious facilities in Bridgewater — several in residential areas — were allowed to remain. The suit seeks to block enforcement of the ordinance and allow the group’s application to be processed. A message left for the mayor of Bridgewater on Wednesday was not i m m e d i at e l y returned. The lead counsel for Al Falah is Arnold & Porter LLP, the pro bono partner of The Brennan Center for Justice. It declined to comment on active litigation. Archer & Greiner and the Asian American Legal Defense Fund also are supporting the Islamic group’s lawsuit.
What should have been an
uncomplicated approval of the
application then foundered in a storm
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of anti-Muslim sentiment and hysteria.
Successive storms ravage South Associated Press BIRMINGHAM, Ala. — Violent weather ripped through the South for a second straight day, killing at least eight people from Arkansas to Alabama, damaging homes in a rural Texas community and spreading destruction into Georgia and Tennessee. The latest round of severe weather Tuesday night and early Wednesday came after a series of powerful storms that had already killed 10 people in Arkansas and one in Mississippi. In the latest storms, a Louisiana police officer on a camping trip was killed by a tree limb while shielding his daughter from the high winds at a state park in northern Mississippi, Choctaw County, Miss., Coroner Keith Coleman said. The daughter was not hurt. Also in Mississippi, a man was crushed in his mobile home when a tree fell during the storm, and a truck driver died after hitting a downed tree on a state highway. In Alabama, where the governor declared a state of emergency, one person was killed in the northern part of the state when a tree fell on a car. Two people died in St. Clair County in central Alabama and another in Jackson County in the northeast, though emergency officials did not say how. The Arkansas Department of Emergency Management confirmed early Wednesday that another person died in a storm in Sharp County. Officials said the person was in a home near Arkansas Highway 230 but didn’t know exactly how the person died or whether a tornado had touched down in the area. In Louisiana, police were investigating if two deaths in Monroe were storm-related. A woman’s body was found early Wednesday in a vehicle that had become trapped in a flooded underpass and a man’s body was found later on a flooded street. The latest round of storms moved through as communities in much of the region struggled with flooding and damage from earlier twisters. In Arkansas, a tornado smashed Vilonia, just north of Little Rock, on Monday night, ripping the roof off the grocery store, flattening homes and tossing vehicles into the air. Four people were killed there, and six died in flooding elsewhere in the state. In Mississippi, a 3-year-old girl was killed when a storm toppled a tree onto her home. The destruction continued Wednesday as severe storms in northwest Georgia downed trees, blew out windows in a hospital and tore off part of a school roof. Much of north and central Georgia was bracing for another round of thunderstorms later Wednesday and a tornado watch was issued. Tara Sripunvoraskul • The Daily Beacon In eastern Tennessee, what appeared to be Victoria Haggerty, sophomore in deaf education, works with a letterpress machine a tornado struck just outside Chattanooga in in the Art and Architecture Building on Tuesday, April 26. Tiftonia, at the base of the tourist peak
Lookout Mountain. Angela Milchack, 29, had just dropped off her son at Lookout Valley Elementary School. Students took cover and none were hurt. “It just sounded like the wind was blowing really, really hard,” she said. Tops were snapped off trees and insulation and metal roof panels littered the ground. Police officers walked down the street, spraypainting symbols at houses they had checked for people who might be inside. The National Weather Service had issued a high-risk warning for severe weather from northeast of Memphis to just northeast of Dallas and covering a large swath of Arkansas. It last issued such a warning on April 16, when dozens of tornadoes hit North Carolina and killed 21 people. Emergency management officials in Alabama said two suspected tornadoes touched down in Marshall County, about 70 miles northeast of Birmingham, causing widespread injuries and damage. “There are people trapped in mobile homes, in vehicles. We’ve got trees down all over, power lines down all over. It’s all over the county,” said Phil Mayer, working in the county emergency management office. The weather service didn’t immediately confirm twister damage, but forecasters had issued several tornado warnings and said winds blew as hard as 70 mph, just short of hurricane force. High winds also damaged a hangar at the Birmingham airport. Dozens of tornado warnings were issued in Arkansas throughout the night. Strong winds peeled part of the roof off of a medical building next to a hospital in West Memphis, near the Tennessee border, but no one was inside. At least one person was injured when a storm slammed through the tiny town of Edom some 75 miles east of Dallas late Tuesday, said Fire Chief Eddie Wood. Witnesses described seeing what they thought was a tornado rolling the woman’s mobile home with her inside. A video shot by the Tyler Morning Telegraph showed emergency responders covering the injured woman to shield her from rain and hail. Her mobile home was reduced to a pile of debris in the road. “We have multiple houses damaged or destroyed,” said Chuck Allen, Van Zandt County emergency management spokesman. He said he would survey the area by helicopter Wednesday to get an accurate count. Ted Ryan, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Fort Worth, said at least one tornado almost certainly hit between Edom and the town of Van to the north. He said the weather service would send a team to the area Wednesday to assess the damage and determine the strength of the storm.