- Follow us
-
-
-
-
-
-
By Ela Dutt
A Muslim organization, which for years has led the effort to build a mosque in Bridgewater at the site of the former Redwood Inn, won a settlement with the township that allows it to move forward on the project, but in a different location.
The Al Falah Center reached a settlement last week with Bridgewater Township after years of acrimony and a successful lawsuit filed against this New Jersey Township. Now Al Falah is going to build its mosque in a 10.75 site elsewhere for which it has to get all the approvals. However, if the approvals are not procured, the Redwood Inn would be turned into a mosque, says the settlement. Al Falah also received a monetary compensation as part of the settlement.
“It’s a great settlement. We were able to achieve what we planned to do and have a place of worship,” Dr. Syed Azhar Siddiq, board member of Al Falah, told News India Times.
“We applaud the Mayor and the Council for entering into this Agreement and look forward to working cooperatively with them to reach our objective. And we want to thank our legal team, who have stood by us throughout,” Yasser Abdelkader, president of Al Falah Center is quoted saying in a release. The Center is represented by the top lawfirm Arnold & Porter LLP, as well as Archer & Greiner, P.C., The Brennan Center for Justice, and the Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund.
In 2011, Al Falah Center applied for approval to convert Redwood Inn, a former banquet hall into a mosque. The town shortly afterwards enacted a zoning change that effectively prevented the building of the mosque. Al Falah sued Bridgewater Township in September 2011 alleging the town had violated Al Falah Center’s federal constitutional rights under the First Amendment and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, as well as corresponding protections of New Jersey’s Constitution. The suit also alleged violations of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act of 2000 (RLUIPA).
On Sept. 30, 2013, the court ruled in favor of Al Falah Center, and put a preliminary hold on the Township’s new zoning ordinance as it applied to Al Falah Center’s mosque application. The ruling recognized that the Muslim community was being deprived of the ability to use its property as a house of worship.
Under the settlement just reached, the Township has agreed to exchange a 10.75 acre piece of land on Route 202/206 in Bridgewater for the Redwood Inn property. The exchange will occur only after Al Falah Center has obtained all approvals necessary to construct a mosque on the new property. If those approvals are not obtained, the settlement provides that the preliminary injunction will be made permanent so that Al Falah Center can build the mosque in its original location at the Redwood Inn site. In addition, Al Falah Center has received a substantial monetary settlement, which it can use to help finance construction of its mosque on either of the two properties, a release from AALDEF said.
“We may not have got the Redwood Inn, but in a settlement you give up something to get something,” Dr. Siddiq said. “Right now the nearest mosque for us is the one in Piscataway about half and hour away, or the Boonton mosque, also half an hour away,” he noted.
The Bridgewater mosque would serve the needs of the large Muslim community in the Township and surrounding areas like Summerville and Warren, a majority of whom are of Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi origin, according to Siddiq.
When Al Falah filed its lawsuit in 2011, Bridgewater had 17 churches, a Catholic convent, a synagogue, two Hindu temples and one Sikh temple. “There certainly has not been opposition to synagogues and churches that includes the kind of bigotry we’ve seen against mosques.” Rabbi Eric J. Greenberg, coordinator of the Interfaith Coalition on Mosques was quoted saying in the New Jersey Jewish News.
This story originally appeared on News India Times.
