News and Editorials

South Valley Mosque Proposal & Treatment

June 2007

Let’s settle land use questions on the basis of actual use factors, not on the basis of religion!

The South Valley Islamic Association has as much right to a mosque in South County as any church, temple, or sanctuary. We should be pleased at the orderly presence of any house of worship in our communities. They build stability in America, not terrorism.

Admittedly, in some other countries it appears that the opposite may be so. However, those who choose to settle their families here desire freedom and in particular stability. Unless proven otherwise, they demonstrate that the safest religious immigrants move here to get away from dangerous movements elsewhere. That’s a self-selection process from which America has benefited throughout our history (with due apologies to the first American cultures so rudely displaced!)

In fact, it’s actually the basis of our most fundamental principles of governance. Remember the Bill of Rights? Freedom of Religion? Do you recall the often fatal religious discrimination that caused many of the colonists to flee from Europe in the first place?

They were the Quakers, the Puritans, the Baptists, the Protestants or Catholics fleeing Christian lands where the other held power brutally in many cases, the Jews expelled from so many countries, the Muslims (yes, Muslims too in those days). If you read the commentaries and public statements made by the framers of the Constitution you’ll be shocked at how liberal and vehement they were about welcoming other faiths. George Washington was particularly eloquent in insisting that all people of any faith had a right and a place and should be treated fairly and equally in the new country. He was pretty clear about feeling good about good people, regardless of their creed.

And we should be too!

A Sikh friend shared with me the wisdom he received from his father: “Better to spend your days in the company of good people of other faiths, than in the company of bad people of your own.” The statement is a lesson for all of us about seeking those who we can determine are trying to be “good”, even if their practices and beliefs appear a little strange to us. My friend was clear that those who showed their desire to raise their families in some sort of religious values were indeed trying to “be good”.

If you need to discuss parking, size, noise, etc., with a group seeking to build a house of worship nearby, then by all means do so with them.

Don’t single them out for hateful discrimination. They might become your best neighbors in the long run!

Bart A. Charlow, President
Silicon Valley Conference for Community and Justice