Written by Don Byrd
Controversies over mosque construction a couple of years ago were some of the ugliest religious liberty disputes of recent years. None was more troubling than the fight over the Islamic Center in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. There, arguments went so far afield that the US Attorney choose to step in and file a brief with the court explaining the government’s position that Islam is in fact a religion whose adherents are protected by the First Amendment.
Mosque opponents in Murfreesboro were unsuccessful in their bid to stop the Islamic Center, but they have not stopped pressing their case. Bob Allen of Associated Baptist Press reports on the latest development. The group has filed an appeal with the U.S. Supreme Court:
The appeal challenges a May 2013 ruling by the Tennessee Court of Appeals in Nashville that the Rutherford County planning commission acted properly under Tennessee’s Open Meetings Act prior to approving May 24, 2010, plans for a megachurch-like mosque campus to replace outgrown facilities in which the community’s Muslim residents had been meeting for worship for about 30 years.
It also asks the high court to test boundaries of the Religious Land Use And Institutionalized Persons Act, a law passed by Congress in 2000 that protects the religious exercise of persons confined to prison and bans the government from regulating land use in “a manner that imposes a substantial burden on the religious exercise” of a person or congregation without a “compelling governmental interest” that is furthered by “the least restrictive means.”
You can read the appeal here (pdf).
