New Jersy mosques are to increase by one

NEW JERSY, November 12 (IslamOnline.net &  News Agencies) – A Muslim group’s hopes to turn an old abandoned office building into a mosque is about to come true in a small New Jersy town where the support of an interfaith group helped overcome opposition from some locals.

The construction of the religious building could start as soon as the spring, after the zoning board for Voorhees, a Philadelphia suburb, approved the 193,000 dollar plan for this last week, CNN reported.

Before getting the unanimous approval by the zoning board, a minority of townspeople distributed anonymous fliers to nearby homes claiming the mosque could attract people with "terrorist" connections.

But such allegations only energized the Coalition for Multi-Faith Democracy, a group including Methodists, Catholics, Quakers, Unitarian Universalists, Muslims and Jews, who supported the plans for building the mosque, CNN reported.

"It was approved because there was no legal reason in the world to disapprove it," said Rev. Melanie Morel Sullivan, minister of the Unitarian Universalist Church in nearby Cherry Hill, New Jersey.

Before the decision, the Coalition provided patches for mosque supporters to wear.

Many mosque supporters wore cloth patches depicting four hands in various colors grasping each other.

The proposal was made by the Muslim American Community Association and was approved late Thursday, November 6, after the board heard several hours of public comment.

"We were very heartened by the support that the Muslim community got from different churches," Zia Rahman, managing trustee of the association, was quoted by CNN as saying.

"It was very helpful and it far outweighs the opposition," said Rahman.

"I think the board was very compassionate. I think the community as a whole will be very much together," he continued.

The mosque, a very important place for Muslims' worshipping, was needed for 15 Muslim families to be able to have a place in Camden County to worship instead of traveling to other faraway sites.

They needed a variance because the building was too close to the road.

The project would also make a big change for a building that now has weeds growing through cracks in the driveway and old tires lying around.

Similar Incidents

Ibrahim Hooper, a spokesman for the Washington-based Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) said that mosques opening across the country have run into similar criticism, stemming in part from anti-Muslim attitudes.

But the coalition’s support marked a victory for Muslim Americans, who had suffered from a rising pace of hate crimes in the aftermath of September 11 attacks that Washington blames of Al-Qaeda group of Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.

Opponents to the mosque’s construction were driven by "fear and misunderstanding" stemming from the September 11 attacks and continuing attacks on U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq, Coalition founder Lisa Volpe was quoted by CNN as saying.

"I was concerned that the national issues would be played out locally. This is a very touchy time for the world,” he said.