U.S.A.: Controversies over Mosques and Islamic Centers Across the US, an interactive map in pewforum.org; Report of the Justice Department on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act
Controversies over Mosques and Islamic Centers Across the USA (pewforum.org)
24 September 2010
An interactive map shows the locations of 35 proposed mosques and Islamic centers that have encountered community resistance in the last two years. Below are brief overviews of each project based on news reports, organized alphabetically by state and then by city. In many cases, the opposition has centered on neighbors’ concerns about traffic, noise, parking and property values – the same objections that often greet churches and other houses of worship as well as commercial construction projects. In some communities, however, opponents of mosques also have cited fears about Islam, sharia law and terrorism.
While the map shows only projects that have met resistance, many mosques and Islamic centers have been built in recent years with little or no opposition.
Currently, there are 1,897 mosques in the U.S., according to Ihsan Bagby, associate professor of Islamic Studies at the University of Kentucky. The Mosque Study Project 2000, sponsored by four Muslim organizations, counted 1,209 mosques across the country in 2000, which suggests that about a third of the mosques in the U.S. have opened in the last decade.
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On Sept. 22, the Department of Justice released a report (Report on the Tenth Anniversary of the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act) on cases of discrimination against mosques, synagogues, churches and other religious sites since 2000, when the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, which protects places of worship and other religious uses of property from discrimination and unreasonably burdensome regulation, was signed into law.
Argomenti: Rapporti & Dossier