Muslim Advocacy Group Launches Investigation into Potential Bias against Los Gatos Mosque
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization with a San Francisco Bay Area office, is requesting records from the Town of Los Gatos to determine if the town’s only mosque is facing unfair treatment.
When the West Valley Muslim Association (WVMA) applied to amend its conditional use permit to allow for expanded hours to accommodate the daily prayers required in Islam, the group was hit with 33 conditions of approval. The association appealed 19 conditions to the town council on the grounds that they lacked substantial evidence or indicated abuse of discretion. The top disputed conditions include annual compliance reviews, restrictions on religious activities, attendance restrictions below the fire code limit, parking and traffic requirements, expanded communication mandates and capital improvement requirements.
Mosque leaders argued that the challenged conditions violate the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a federal law that protects religious institutions from discriminatory or unnecessarily burdensome land-use restrictions.
CAIR requested records related to the association’s permit process, comparable land-use decisions, recent changes to Los Gatos permit policies and how the town applies conditions to houses of worship and other community institutions. They said they are seeking transparency into how the challenged conditions were developed and whether WVMA was held to a stricter or more burdensome standards than similar institutions.
The Los Gatos Anti-Racism Coalition is hosting an book club meeting on July 25.
The group will be discussing “How Democracies Die” by Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt, two political scientists from Harvard university. The book argues that democracies erode through the backsliding of democratic ideals like mutual tolerance, along with legal processes like the weakening of independent courts.
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The coalition encourages people to attend the meeting whether or not they’ve read the whole book, but suggest reading at least one chapter. There are a few copies available at Los Gatos Library.
The meeting will be held at 2 p.m. in the library’s conference room.
Source: mercurynews.com
