Troy City Attorney Lori Grigg Bluhm said: “The city articulated several reasons for its denial of Adam’s multiple and significant variance requests for a retrofit of an existing building on Rochester Road that abuts residential properties. Some of these requested variances were significant.”
In response to this, Hamas-linked CAIR is crying “Islamophobia” and suing. We have seen the same scenario play out all over the country: Muslims demand zoning variances in order to build mosques in residential areas, claim “Islamophobia” when they’re denied, no matter how reasonable and carefully explained the denial, and sue. All too often, the Justice Department has then sided with the Muslim group, and forced the municipality in question to accept the mosque and even pay damages to the Muslims.
The purpose of this intimidation is to reinforce the principle that wherever Islamic law and practice and American law and practice disagree, it is American law and practice that must give way. Ultimately, Americans are going to have to decide whether to give way entirely to that principle and submit to Sharia, or to draw the line and say “no more” at some point. But that point is unlikely to be the mosque in Troy, Michigan.
CAIR is an unindicted co-conspirator in a Hamas terror funding case — so named by the Justice Department. CAIR officials have repeatedly refused to denounce Hamas and Hizballah as terrorist groups. Several former CAIR officials have been convicted of various crimes related to jihad terror. CAIR’s cofounder and longtime Board chairman (Omar Ahmad), as well as its chief spokesman (Ibrahim Hooper), have made Islamic supremacist statements about how Islamic law should be imposed in the U.S. (Ahmad denies this, but the original reporter stands by her story.) CAIR chapters frequently distribute pamphlets telling Muslims not to cooperate with law enforcement. CAIR has opposed virtually every anti-terror measure that has been proposed or implemented and has been declared a terror organization by the United Arab Emirates. One CAIR operative in 2017 called for the overthrow of the U.S. government.
“Muslim group sues Troy over mosque denial,” by Robert Snell, Detroit News, November 8, 2018:
The city of Troy discriminated against a Muslim community group by rejecting plans to build an Islamic center, according to a federal court lawsuit filed Thursday.
The nonprofit Adam Community Center sued the city council, planning commission and members of Troy’s zoning board of appeals. The group has tried unsuccessfully to build a community center in Troy, which has approximately 53 places of worship within its 33.6-square-mile border but not one for Muslims, according to the Michigan chapter of Council on American-Islamic Relations.
The lawsuit alleges Troy officials purposely and unconstitutionally tried to block the Muslim community from building a mosque along Rochester Road, north of Big Beaver Road, by unfairly and illegally applying zoning ordinances.
Adam Community Center sued five months after the Troy Zoning Board of Appeals indicated there was no acceptable place in the city left for the group to build a mosque. The decision prompted a Justice Department investigation into the city’s zoning board of appeals practices, which is ongoing, according to the Council on American-Islamic Relations.
“Freedom of religion is a benchmark of American civil rights and is a beacon of freedom that shines across the globe,” Amy Doukoure, staff attorney for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said in a statement Thursday. “When public officials are apparently guided by Islamophobia in their decision-making, we have an obligation to fight back to preserve our religious freedoms.”
Troy officials “will aggressively defend this lawsuit,” City Attorney Lori Grigg Bluhm wrote in an email to The News.
“The city articulated several reasons for its denial of Adam’s multiple and significant variance requests for a retrofit of an existing building on Rochester Road that abuts residential properties,” she wrote.
The center could not have been built without parking and other variances, Grigg Bluhm added.
“Some of these requested variances were significant,” she wrote. “Through the variance process, (Adam) was required to demonstrate that they could not develop the property in accordance with Troy’s zoning ordinances because of hardships that related to the land itself.”…