Topic: WorldNetDaily
WorldNetDaily has predictably served up another example of attacking Muslims for using the very same religious-freedom law it has praised Christians for invoking.
Bob Unruh writes in a March 31 article about "a case brought by Mohammed Ali Chaudry and the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge against Bernards Township, [New Jersey]," which is trying to build a mosque, a case that in part involves "the apparent intervention of the Obama administration against the local government, even while the public hearings over the project were ongoing."
As is WND's biased standard, Unruh quotes only opponents of the mosque, as is to be expected given that he's merely rewriting a press release from the right-wing Thomas More Law Center, which is representing mosque opponents who apparently don't want to be held accountable for their words. Unruh also quotes Karen Lugo, whom hedescribes only as "a specialist on constitutional law and zoning issues" (a turn of phrase straight from the Thomas More press release), not mentioning that she's an anti-Muslim activsts whose real expertise is manipulating local zoning laws to stop mosques from being built.
That's what seems to be the case here, in which the township required that the mosque have more than twice as many parking spaces than it requires for a similarly sized church. Unruh does acknowledge this, but also complained that the Department of Justice, "under an agenda imposed by Obama, sued Bernards Township" over the planned mosque.
What Unruh doesn't mention, however, is that the "agenda" the DOJ is using is the federal Religious Land Use and Institutional Persons Act, and as a real news outlet reported, a federal judge found Bernards Township guilty of violating it by demanding an excessive number of parking spaces in denying zoning for the mosque after a four-year battle. WND has repeatedly praised Christian organizations who invoked RLUIPA against alleged municipal discrimination.
Unruh says nothing about RLUIPA being the basis for the legal action, even though the Thomas More press release did -- just like Unruh's WND colleague Leo Hohmann failed to do in writing about a similar legal action regarding a proposed Michigan mosque.
The headline on Unruh's article calls the legal action "mosque lawfare." We're pretty sure WND used the term "church lawfare" to describe any Christian organization that invoked RLUIPA.
