A proposed Oklahoma mosque appeared to meet all the zoning requirements. Bigotry still won out.

City leaders hid behind infrastructure concerns after weeks of open Islamophobia and political fear-mongering

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The city of Broken Arrow, Oklahoma has rejected a plan that would have allowed the Islamic Society of Tulsa (IST) to build a new mosque, even though they had all the necessary approvals from the city’s planning commission. The council members voted 4-1 against the new project, and there’s good reason to believe the decision was influenced by straight-up bigotry rather than concerns about land use.

The IST already has a mosque in midtown, but they say they need another location because of overcrowding at the first one. (They have fewer than 400 parking spaces in that location, for example, but over twice as many members.) To that end, they purchased property in 2014 about 15 minutes away from the current location in the hopes they could eventually build a second mosque there. While that space was originally designated for agricultural use, in 2019, the city said it could be used for commercial reasons and permits could be assigned for assembly space.

To put it in even blunter terms, the city was taking land that could theoretically be used for farming and saying investors could now use it for a new business, with their approval. If a church or other religious group wanted to build a new location—one that would not pay taxes to the area—it would need special permission.

That’s what the IST was hoping to get approval for. They said they wanted to build a “42,000 square foot community center with a medical clinic open to the public and worship area, and a 20,000 square foot retail area fronting Olive Street.” They also promised to deal with sewage and drainage issues on that property before construction began.

But before the city’s planning commission could take a vote to move forward with the proposal, however, conservative Christians fought against it with predictable bigotry:

“Cowards!” shouted one of those who stayed to the bitter end.

“You’re all going to be sued,” said another.

A third muttered something about terrorists.

…

“It blows my mind this is even being considered,” said Lane Brown, a Rogers County Commission candidate who is active on social media.

Brown cited the recent shooting by Muslims of military personnel in Washington and Syria, and said the commission would be “quite literally inviting that kind of violence into this community.”

Others said Muslims constantly lie “to get their way.” One or two called [IST representative Aslam] Syed a liar directly to his face.

Islam is not a religion, many said, but a culture of conquest and power determined to take over the western world. They cited everything from personal experience to seventh century massacres to the Northwest Ordinance to Charlie Kirk while making their point.

It was just blatant Islamophobia and no amount of assurances from the Muslims involved with the project was going to sway them. Syed said their were certainly legitimate concerns about traffic and drainage, which their community would address, but the bigotry was appalling:

“The one thing that really hurt me,” he told the commission, “is this idea of wanting to take over the country. No normal person thinks that way. We don’t do that.”

The bulk of the hate, as you’d expect, came from local Republicans.

The Tulsa County Republican Party helped rally the opposition through emails and social media, and several GOP leaders were in attendance. National Committeewoman Karen Hardin, state Sen. Christie Gillespie and former state Sen. Nathan Dahm all spoke against the project on technical and economic development grounds.

In other words, conservative bigots screamed out their anti-Muslim screeds while the more professional Republicans made up technical reasons for why the project shouldn’t move forward.

There are some legitimate concerns about a new mosque, but they’re the same ones you’d make against a new Christian church. Traffic might go up. There might be a lot of noise during services. The land could better serve the community if it was a Walmart, say, and not a religious building that doesn’t have to pay taxes.

The IST addressed all of those concerns, suggesting traffic would only change on limited occasions, no different from a megachurch during Christmas. There wouldn’t be any outdoor speakers, and they never had noise problems in their other location. They were building a retail space in addition to the mosque.

But that didn’t stop the whiners. Of course it didn’t. They were morally opposed to non-Christians having any kind of space at all.

“We do not need or want another Dearborn, Michigan or East Plano Islamic Center,” said Cheri Thomas of Broken Arrow, who is concerned Muslim citizens will overwhelm the city if a mosque is built. “They reject our laws and customs and, as you can see by their own writings, their goal is to take over and impose their laws — not assimilate, embrace or comply with our constitution or our culture.

“Islam is incompatible with our constitution. It’s the job of our government to protect our culture, legal interests and citizen rights and freedoms, not pander to those who are hostile to our constitution.”

Can’t have anyone hostile to the Constitution, say the same kind of people who voted for Donald Trump and supported the January 6 rioters…

The planning commission, however, appeared to just focus on the merits of the case. On December 18, they voted 4-1 to allow commercial use of the proposed land and 3-2 to allow a provisional permit for a place of assembly. It was a win, albeit just the first one, for the Muslim community A Facebook page for “Oklahoma DOGE” reacted with a blunt message, suggesting the commissioners were “RINO”—Republicans In Name Only.

But those votes simply meant the proposal would now go before the city council for final approval. That also meant there were several weeks for religious bigots to make another larger stand against the new mosque.

On January 8, Attorney General Gentner Drummond, who’s been an otherwise surprising champion of church/state separation over the past couple of years, announced he would launch an investigation into whether this mosque would be illegal, invoking terrorism and 9/11:

“Oklahomans deserve confidence that local land-use decisions are being made lawfully, transparently and in full compliance with state and federal law,” he said. “My office will examine whether the proposed development and the processes surrounding it meet those legal requirements.”

Moreover, Drummond said his office will investigate funding sources for the initiative. Land for the development is owned by the North American Islamic Trust, which reportedly has ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood.

“Given the realities of global terrorism, there can be no compromise on public safety and security,” he said. “In our state, we have already seen a radical Islamist sentenced for plotting mass murder. Several 9/11 hijackers had attended an Oklahoma flight school. It is only appropriate to act with caution when the project in question might have connections to the Muslim Brotherhood.”

There’s literally zero connection between the Muslims trying to build a mosque in Broken Arrow and the 9/11 terrorists, but when you’re running for governor as a Republican, this is the sort of shit you’re expected to say. It would be just as awful to claim a new church couldn’t be built because, you know, the Oklahoma City bombing was committed by a white Christian Nationalist.

The opposition was out in full force well before the Broken Arrow City Council could take a final vote on approving the rezoning. Like this unofficial gathering last week:

The crowd, which seemed to peak at around 400, was told the meeting was "not about religion," but literature unfavorably comparing Islam to Christianity was handed out. And while the nearly two-hour conversation stayed mainly on topic, the loudest applause was for a young woman who said she had converted from Islam to Christianity.

On Monday night, when the city council finally met, the bigots controlled the floor and may have been the deciding factor in the 4-1 vote to reject the planning commission’s approval for the zoning request and special use permit.

Broken Arrow City Council (screenshot via KTUL)

Some of the opponents cited secular reasons for their objections—”The infrastructure needed to support such development is not in place at this time,” said one councilor—but the bigotry was never far behind:

Opponents of the project, including Republican State Sen. Gabe Woolley, pointed to traffic issues as a main reason to deny the request. Amid uproar over the mosque, Woolley filed a bill last week reviving efforts to ban sharia law in the state.

…

Linda Russell, a Broken Arrow resident, claimed the Islamic Society of Tulsa has been “repeatedly connected” to terrorist organizations, referencing an investigation opened by Attorney General Gentner Drummond last week. Drummond, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, said he was looking into a connection to the Muslim Brotherhood. The society has denied there is any foreign funding associated with the project.

“Councilors, this is why we’re having this discussion,” Russell said. “When an organization has been repeatedly connected by courtroom rulings, FBI investigations and public officials to extremist groups, caution is not fear-mongering — it’s common sense.”

There’s literally no connection between the Islamic Society of Tulsa and extremist groups. But Drummond’s fear-mongering achieved its goal, so congratulations to him, I guess.

Even if anti-Muslim bigotry wasn’t the justification offered by city council members who voted against the zoning requests, the bigots didn’t bother downplaying the real reasons they were celebrating. Like one pastor who posted on X/Twitter, “This is the way. Outlaw mosques.”

Other comments included “We’re going to kick the rest of them out,” “When it comes to Islam, it's them or us,” and “Just say no to islamification.”

The Tulsa County Democratic Party, in response to the hate, called out the council members for just remaining silent while bigots said awful things during public comments:

The Broken Arrow City Council sat in complete silence as people said things like, “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslim”. Some of us were alive on April 19, 1995 [when the Oklahoma City bombing occurred].

…

Even in statements after the meeting to the press, Mayor Debra Wimpee chooses not to speak a word about the discriminatory rhetoric she entertained while holding the gavel.

No one deserves that kind of treatment anywhere, let alone at a public meeting ran by sitting elected officials.

At this point, the IST doesn’t have much choice. They can explore litigation, though the councilors insisted their votes had nothing to do with anti-Islamic sentiment, but barring a smoking gun in that regard, they may just have to search for a different location:

“We’re going to consult our legal help, and we’ll find our next steps with them and see what we can do about this ruling today by the city council,” said Aslam Syed with the IST. “I’m disappointed that my prayers were not answered, but [it’s] an expected result.

Right now, the public comments made about this situation reveal an ugly, deeply entrenched strain of anti-Muslim bigotry rather than an otherwise boring zoning dispute gone awry. The fact that the Broken Arrow City Council couched their votes in language about infrastructure shouldn’t deflect from how they came after weeks of blatant Islamophobia, conspiracy theories, and explicit calls to exclude Muslims from public life, statements which were essentially ignored by the elected leaders. More than anything, I have serious doubts about whether the same technical objections would have been raised if Christian megachurch leaders wanted to build a new location at the same spot rather than a Muslim group.

The Islamic Society of Tulsa addressed all the hurdles people threw their way, including traffic, noise, drainage, and mixed-use development. They did everything right, and got the approval they sought from the planning commission, only to be rejected after massive pushback from Christian zealots. In that context, the council’s insistence that bigotry played no role in their decision-making isn’t reassuring. The fact that the attorney general is investigating the Muslim group based on nothing but conjecture is appalling as well.

Why should the rest of us care? Because if a Muslim community can meet every formal requirement to build a mosque and still be denied because elected officials lack the courage to confront open hatred, then religious freedom means nothing. That’s why this isn’t just some local controversy. It’s a warning. It shows what happens when local leaders allow bigotry to fester and when that hate is normalized at meetings without being directly confronted. Even if they claim this vote is best for the community, their complicity is so damn clear.

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