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Former Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin merely fanned the already raging flames when she urged New York City to prevent Muslims from building a community center two blocks from the former World Trade Center site.

“Peace-seeking Muslims, pls understand, Ground Zero mosque is UNNECESSARY provocation; it stabs hearts,” Palin Tweeted on July 18. “Pls reject it in interest of healing.”

Developer Sharif El-Gamal rejects descriptions of the new facility as a mosque. But plans for the $100 million building, rising at least 13 stories high, do include room for corporate prayer led by an imam. And the lecture hall and 500-seat auditorium could be used for teaching Islam. Whatever you want to call the building, emotions run high on both sides. Elaborting on her Tweet in a Facebook post that has garnered more than 5,000 comments so far, Palin quoted the sister of a victim who died in the September 11 attack on the Pentagon.

“This is a place which is 600 feet from where almost 3,000 people were torn to pieces by Islamic extremists,” Debra Burlingame said. “I think that it is incredibly insensitive and audacious really for them to build a mosque, not only on that site, but to do it specifically so that they could be in proximity to where that atrocity happened.”

Proximity to Ground Zero only escalates the conflict over Muslim building projects that is taking place all over America right now. Many residents of Murfreesboro, Tennessee, oppose plans to build an Islamic community center in the town of more than 100,000. About 600 people turned out for a county commission meeting in June to debate the plans. Critics of the plan cited America’s founding, Islamic beliefs, and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as reasons to decline permission.

“We have a duty to investigate anyone under the banner of Islam,” said Allen Jackson, the pastor of World Outreach Church.

Nevertheless, county leaders announced that the Murfreesboro project would proceed as planned. After all, the community center violates no zoning ordinances. And county officials would risk a costly lawsuit if they singled out Muslims by rejecting their building plan. According to legal observers, these two issues guide Christian response to the growing number of mosques and facilities for other religions popping up in towns all over America. Certainly, a new mosque is no cause for celebration from Christians who believe salvation comes through Jesus Christ alone. Yet the costs to opposing new mosques are high.

“If we do not treat a mosque the same as a synagogue or church then the church will be next,” said Bruce Strom, executive director for Administer Justice, based in Elgin, Illinois, outside Chicago. “In fact, the church is often attacked on some of the same grounds, not wanting a particular race to be in a particular area, [such as] Koreans on the North Shore, Hispanics in the western suburbs, and African Americans in the near South Side.”

Indeed, many churches today find securing permits surprisingly burdensome. Reporting an article in 2008 for Leadership, I discovered the extent of some municipalities’ opposition to church growth. The Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA), signed in 2000 by President Clinton, ought to protect churches, and mosques, for that matter. But a law does not guarantee uniform application. Cities object to increased traffic in residential zones and lost property tax revenue. Neighbors worry about decreasing home values. Churches looking to avoid a potentially protracted legal fight may find less opposition to building in transition zones between commercial and residential areas.

John Mauck, a lawyer in Chicago, helped write RLUIPA, and he advises churches on how to work with local governments to secure building permission. Like Strom, he sees legal self-interest for Christians to support Muslims seeking to build mosques.

“As America becomes secularized, hostility towards believers has increased significantly,” Mauck says. “Our free exercise liberties are largely indivisible. If they are not free to build, then we will lose that freedom eventually.”

Yet Mauck sees other motivations with global consequences. He says that when an American government blocks Muslims from building a mosque, the news spreads to predominantly Islamic countries around the world. As a result, Christians missionaries in these countries face threats of retaliation. And barring Muslims from building mosques in the West certainly can’t help Christians lobbying for permission to build churches in closed and otherwise hostile Islamic nations.

To be sure, there may be perfectly good reasons for Christians to stand behind the law to oppose construction for a new mosque. These occasions are rare, Mauck cautions, but local governments may have no less restrictive way of upholding public health and safety than to decline permission. Outside Chicago, the DuPage County Board of Appeals considered on July 12 a request from Muslims to use a residential home for prayer and a food pantry. They asked for permission to clear room for 30 parking spaces. Neighbors were adamant that their opposition stemmed from concern about these parking spaces and traffic, not fear of sharing the neighborhood with a different race or religion. These neighbors may have reason for believing they will win when the board announces its decision in September. Islamic leaders acknowledged they have been violating county ordinances, racking up numerous unpaid fines since 2008 by hosting prayer and a food pantry in the home without zoning permission.

Even out of these tense situations, God can bring about gospel fruit. A few years ago, Mauck represented a mosque during a zoning dispute in Morton Grove, Illinois. The Muslims sought to hire a Christian attorney to aid in their defense.

“Certainly they had some religious/legal/political agenda within that choice,” Mauck said. “But that choice also implies to me that they sensed they would get honest treatment from a Jesus believer, and that they had come to understand the difference between a stereotypical American and a Christian. People are confused about who Jesus is. Removal of their misconceptions is vital to their personal faith journeys (Isa. 40:3-5). I was able to share verbally and by action my faith in God, as opposed to a fear of Islam.”

Is there enough evidence for us to believe the Gospels?

In an age of faith deconstruction and skepticism about the Bible’s authority, it’s common to hear claims that the Gospels are unreliable propaganda. And if the Gospels are shown to be historically unreliable, the whole foundation of Christianity begins to crumble.
But the Gospels are historically reliable. And the evidence for this is vast.
To learn about the evidence for the historical reliability of the four Gospels, click below to access a FREE eBook of Can We Trust the Gospels? written by New Testament scholar Peter J. Williams.

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