When He's Right, He's Right

We like to slap around Jonathan Krause whenever we can here at the Chief, so when he's correct about something we may as well point that out as well.

Krause was, indeed, right to point out some of the insane and genuinely frightening argument given against a mosque winning a conditional use permit in a community outside of Sheboygan:

The board itself did a great job--approving the permits, as there was nothing in the zoning laws prohibiting such a use for the building--but some of the residents used the opportunity to set back religious relations in the area about 200 years.

Here's the WLUK story on the meeting:



One thing that really struck me was the size of the Muslim community looking for a place of worship: 80-100 families. Not people, families. Here in Oshkosh there are faith communities with their own brick and mortar churches that have a fraction of that congregation, so it's good to see an underserved portion of the population finally getting a place to call home.

That being said, I think just about everyone has underestimated just how nutty the opposition was to the mosque, which is difficult to capture in a few second soundbite. For those interested in just how irrational, indeed incoherent the opposition was, go check out this blog post by a Sheboygan area evangelical who opposed the mosque because:

I believe that, by allowing this mosque to come into existence without giving a proper respect to the governing aspect of the religion of Islam, the board is, in effect, ceding United States sovereignty over that piece of property in perpetuity.

Seriously.

What follows are a few hundred words trying to explain that statement, none of which really make any sense at all, and some boilerplate Islamophobia. It's not surprising, but still ridiculous.