Muslims Try to Shut Down Property Rights of Tennessee Neighbor
Posted on April 6, 2009
-By Warner Todd Huston
Trevor Hill owns what was once a blighted, rundown building in Knoxville, Tennessee. Hill has upgraded and repaired the building and built a restaurant there that he’s christened The Hill restaurant. It’s a full service restaurant and that means it is to serve alcohol. And that last fact seems to be causing a conflict with the folks that own the neighboring building: the Anoor mosque.
Apparently one of the mosque board members, Nadeem Sidiqqi, is upset that an American property owner could possibly serve alcohol in his own business. Sidiqqi thinks he should be able to tell the owner of The Hill restaurant that he shouldn’t be allowed to serve alcohol so close to his mosque. He thinks that the city should invent a law that would mandate a “buffer zone” so that his religious tenets can be enforced on his neighbors. Sidiqqi wants to prevent neighboring property owners from doing as they wish with their own property.
So, is this America or Saudi Arabia?
To illegitimize Sidiqqi’s concerns further, the entrance of the mosque is on a different street than that of the restaurant, though the buildings are 191 feet apart. The mosque-goers wouldn’t even be confronted with restaurant customers.
Folks, this is America. If we live in a city that allows alcohol — and not every American city does, to be sure — then there is no reason a property owner should be allowed to stop a neighboring business from serving alcohol over religious reasons.
The mosque’s adherents don’t have to serve alcohol to its fellows on their own property, certainly. But they have no right to interfere with a neighbor’s legal business venture. If the Muslims in the Anoor mosque don’t like their neighbors they have every right to sell their property and move their church to another location that is more to their liking.
We are not living in Saudi Arabia.
» Filed Under Anti-Americanism, Church And State, Islam, Islamicfascism, News, War On Terror, liberalism, religion
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8 Responses to “Muslims Try to Shut Down Property Rights of Tennessee Neighbor”
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e thinks that the city should invent a law that would mandate a “buffer zone”
If you had read the article you link to, you would notice that there is already a law mandating a buffer zone around “churches and other similar institutions”. The mosque leadership is not trying to create such a law; they are asking that the law that already exists be applied to this case. (The law is a local ordinance; it can be pre-empted by a liquor license from the state Board, and that is the route the restaurant owner is trying to go.)
I can pretty much guarantee you that that ordinance was not enacted for the benefit of Muslims. If the Baptists hadn’t already been imposing their religious idiosyncracies on every one else in the town, the Muslims wouldn’t be asking for equal treatment. The only reasonable solution is to repeal all ordinances imposing restrictions on ordinary liberties solely for the purpose of catering to religious groups.
Ironically, you’ll probably need the ACLU to take the case for you. Give ‘em a call!
To be fair where I live we have had a few disputes over the years where religious groups (in these cases Christian) attempted to block liquor stores or bars from being licensed near their buildings. The article notes that the city in question has an ordinance that disallows liquor licenses within 300 feet of a church or school unless they recieve a waiver of some sort. So the mosque goers are well within their rights to attempt to influence the authorities to not grant the waiver (most likely, depending on the denomination, if it was church in this case they’d be complaining too).
Personally I think that the restriction itself is objectionable and that churches should not be granted any special dispensations of that nature (schools are ok in my view). I’m not sure that such an ordinance would survive a court challenge in these times where the “wall of seperation between church and state” has become an implicit part of the Constitution.
Having lived in both Tennessee and Texas, I am very familiar with this kind of dispute. However, in those instances it was the the Southern Baptists up in arms over selling liquor. In Texas, you can always count on the Baptists to protest the changing of “dry precints” to “wet”, whenever a vote comes up. The Baptists similary cite the same religious objections that the Moselems have. In my opinion, no one should force their religious beliefs on anybody else.
Which was there first? Did the mosque move in knowing that there was a restaurant serving alcohol next door? If so, the mosque should move. This is simply logic and fairness. If not, well, perhaps the answer is to repeal the law.
Several years back, Robert Spencer author of many books about the true nature of Islam warned us that too many mosques were going up all around the US.
Sharia law is good for muslims in muslim nations. We will be ruled by no such set of laws so justice for us in such cases is not the same as justice for muslims and mosques. Build mosques at your own risk.
Maybe we could have a “buffer zone” for Muslims.
Let’s say the can’t go west of the Atlantic Ocean nor East of the Pacific.
Problem solved.
Praise be unto Muhammaad Ali.
Allahu Akbar, Roger, Wilco, over and out.
KTK and BE seem to be arguing that if a Christian has done something, they’re in favor of it. Pretty shaky ground you’ve got yourselves on.
Aw, hell, let’s ship ‘em all back, including the wetbacks.