In Basking Ridge, New Jersey, the planning board several years ago rejected the local lslamic Society’s building plan for a new mosque. Among the objections were that the mosque’s visitors had been undercounted by 50%, that the parking lot attached to the mosque was too small for those visitors, that the mosque would be in the middle of […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: The Mosque At Basking Ridge: A Morality Tale? (Part 4)
The Guardian report continued: Around the time the hearings began, some residents received an anonymous piece of mail. Inside was a letter entitled “Meet Your New Neighbor”, and a CD containing a recording of a radio interview in which Chaudry had offered some mildly nuanced opinions on Israel, Hamas and Hezbollah. “Here in Basking Ridge, […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: The Mosque At Basking Ridge: A Morality Tale? (Part 3)
The Guardian report continues: How did a small-town property dispute turn into a religious war, with legal and symbolic implications for all of America? Part of the answer has to do with the country’s labyrinthine land-use laws, which leave most control to state and local governments, which are in turn vulnerable to the furies of […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: The Mosque At Basking Ridge: A Morality Tale? (Part 2)
The Guardian again: Basking Ridge is governed by a five-person elected committee, which meets in a repurposed Tudor-style mansion. (It previously belonged to John Jacob Astor VI, an American aristocrat whose father perished on the Titanic.) One evening last year, I attended a meeting – the first of many – at the town hall, where […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: The Mosque At Basking Ridge: A Morality Tale? (Part 1)
Here’s a story that earlier this year was being presented as a morality tale, where a good-hearted Muslim, Mr. Mohammad Ali Chaudry, wanted nothing more than to play by the rules in applying for permission to build a mosque, and was opposed by a town full of anti-Muslim bigots. But Good triumphed in the end, […]
Indonesia: Mosque survey finds 41% of Jakarta mosques are “radical,” including many that are state-owned
This is only a surprise to those who don’t know, or don’t wish to know, that the teachings of jihad warfare and the subjugation of Infidels under the rule of Islamic law are found among all the mainstream Sunni and Shi’ite schools of jurisprudence, and not just among “radicals.” The Sunni schools: Shafi’i school: A […]
The Two Faces of Suhaib Webb
Some people in this world are very good at playing the game. Some people are unbelievably talented at presenting themselves in the exact way that draws as much positive attention, while making the very idea of negative attention anathema to those that idolize them. A simpler way of saying this might be to say that […]
Germany: Islamic center raises money for jihad terror group Hizballah
Authorities in the West assume, with near-unanimity, that each and every mosque and Islamic center in Western countries is simply the Islamic equivalent of a church or synagogue, posing no security threat whatsoever, and that only “Islamophobes” think otherwise. This assumption, however, is just that, an assumption. It isn’t based on any study of what […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: Sweden, Islam, and the Call to Prayer
In Sweden, Muslims have been demonstrating their menacing power. They have already managed to establish 61 No-Go zones, lawless areas where the Swedish government’s writ does not fully run. Firemen, sanitation men, and civil servants are now afraid to enter these Muslim-populated and Muslim-run zones without police escorts, while the police themselves do not enter […]
Austria’s chancellor gets death threats after closing down mosques
An anti-terrorism probe has been opened into death threats Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz received on social media after his government announced a crackdown on hate preaching and “political Islam.” This is all the more reason for Western countries to target Islamic hate preaching, and to crack down on mosques receiving funding from Muslim nations. Such […]