Busy as ever, Mr. Chaudry has been inviting non-Muslims to visit the Islamic Center, and after the service, in an adjoining room, Chaudry and the Center’s imam took their questions: Why were the women and men separated for prayers? Does the Qur’an prohibit women from driving? What’s the deal with sharia, and is it practiced […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: The Mosque At Basking Ridge: A Morality Tale? (Part 6)
The Guardian report continued: To some people in Basking Ridge, Chaudry’s struggle looked less noble. They saw his battle with the town government as a local political feud, which dated back to his tenure as an elected official, long before he ever proposed the mosque. Chaudry had first run for a seat on the town […]
Hugh Fitzgerald: The Mosque At Basking Ridge: A Morality Tale? (Part 5)
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, […]
Snopes says claim NJ town forbade criticism of Islam “false,” then quotes: “No commentary regarding Islam permitted”
The self-appointed “fact-checker” Snopes is just another corrupt hard-Left mouthpiece, as I demonstrated here. And here they go again. In this case, Snopes sets up a straw man, claiming that the stories about this court implied that the New Jersey town had imposed Sharia blasphemy laws outright, and issued a blanket ban on criticism of […]
Trump DOJ forces NJ town that denied mosque to pay Muslims $3.25 million, build mosque, get “diversity training”
It looks as if the Justice Department swamp not only has not been drained, but is full of more voracious crocodiles than ever before. This case started during the Obama administration, but it is the Trump administration’s Justice Department that is handing down this ruling. President Trump needs to repudiate it, or else he owns […]