Tag Archives: Muslims

Publication in Soc Quarterly: “Would Prefer a Trailer Park to a Large [Religious] Building”

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The quote in the title for my newest article just published in The Sociological Quarterly comes from a comment made at a 2011 public hearing in the Chicago suburbs involving a proposal from a Muslim group to buy land. At face value, the claim is preposterous: what suburbanite living in a well-off suburb would want to live next to a trailer park?

My study titled ““Would Prefer a Trailer Park to a Large [Religious] Building”: Suburban Responses to Proposals for Religious Buildings” looks at what factors lead to more opposition from neighbors and local leaders when religious groups look to buy land, construct a building, or renovate/use an existing building. Is it related to the size of proposed building, the setting for the building, or the group making the request (thinking of multiple cases of Muslim groups facing opposition in the Chicago suburbs – see examples here, here, here, and here)?

The abstract to the study:

To worship in the suburbs, religious congregations often have to apply to local  governments for zoning and building approval. Examining 40 proposals from religious groups in three Chicago suburbs between January 2010 and December 2014 shows that local governments approved the majority of requests. For the proposals that received more negative attention or “no” votes from government bodies, opposition was related to locations adjacent to residences, experiences with one local government, and requests from Muslim groups. These findings have implications for how suburbs address pluralism and new development as the application of zoning guidelines can make it more difficult for religious groups, particularly ones involving immigrants or racial/ethnic minorities, to find and establish a permanent presence in suburban communities.

In sum, religious groups in the United States can theoretically worship in many places – until a local government suggests otherwise, often due to zoning concerns. Religious groups can counter with the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act (RLUIPA) but lawsuits require time and effort and can hinder positive community relations.

New Halal subdivision planned for Sydney suburb

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A new 145-lot development in the western suburbs of Sydney, Australia is drawing reactions from residents:

Qartaba Homes is promoting its 145-lot subdivision at Riverstone, near Rouse Hill, as Australia’s “very first project of its kind for the Muslim community”, The Daily Telegraph revealed yesterday…

Many residents expressed their concerns that non-Muslims would be excluded from the site, while others said the developers were welcome to the land, which they said was flood prone.

Qartaba director Wajahat Rana said the company was happy to sell blocks of land to anyone…

University of Technology Sydney sociology professor Andrew Jakubowicz said the creation of religious enclaves was not a new concept: “The phenomenon of creating an environment where people of a particular religious faith feel comfortable is a very old Christian tradition, associated particularly with the Anglican church.

More on this from the Daily Telegraph:

While the company has insisted people from all religious backgrounds are free to take up the offer, it advises that the loans are “100 per cent Halal” and a “chance to escape Riba (interest)” because interest is a sin under Islamic law.

Qartaba Homes director Khurram Jawaid said it was the real estate deal of a lifetime, open to Australians of all faiths and backgrounds, but the state MP for Hawkesbury Ray Williams said the project was divisive.

“I can only imagine the repercussions if a developer were to advertise a new Judeo-Christian housing estate; they would be hung, drawn and quartered,” Mr Williams said…

Land parcels range from 400sq m to 800sq m and are being offered at $85,000 plus charges, including a booking deposit of 30-35 per cent and a 24-30 month interest-free payment plan.

Sounds like an interesting project. I wonder how a similar proposal might fare in the American suburbs. America has a history of ethnic neighborhoods, particularly in immigrant gateway cities, though the percent of the ethnic group living in that neighborhood may not have been anywhere near 80-100%. In the last few years, I have tracked some of the opposition to mosque proposals in DuPage County (see here and here for examples) but the controversy seems to have died out for the time being. I imagine a proposal for a Halal neighborhood would really raise NIMBY concerns from certain local and national groups.

Just curious: could a process of obtaining homeownership without having to pay interest be appealing to a lot of potential homeowners, particularly in tougher economic times?

Using plagiarism detection software to examine anti-Muslim bias in post-9/11 news coverage

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A new sociological study suggests mainstream media sources tended to rely on the rhetoric of certain anti-Muslim groups after 9/11:

“The vast majority of organisations competing to shape public discourse about Islam after the September 11 attacks delivered pro-Muslim messages, yet my study shows that journalists were so captivated by a small group of fringe organisations that they came to be perceived as mainstream,” the paper’s author, University of North Carolina assistant professor of sociology Christopher Bail, told Wired.co.uk…

Bail and his team used plagiarism detection software to compare 1,084 press releases produced by 120 different organisations with more than 50,000 television transcripts and newspaper articles produced between 2001 and 2008. The software picked up damning similarities between the releases and stories from news outlets including the New York Times, USA Today, the Washington Times, CBS News, CNN and Fox News Channel.

“We learned the American media almost completely ignored public condemnations of terrorist events by prominent Muslim organisations in the United States,” Bail told Wired.co.uk. “Inattention to these condemnations, combined with the emotional warnings of anti-fringe organisations, has created a very distorted representation of the community of advocacy organisations, think tanks, and religious groups competing to shape the representation of Islam in the American public sphere.”…

Bail’s paper, published in the American Sociological Review, is part of a wider study which will investigate how the influence of these fringe groups has spread beyond media and in to the real world, where doors have been opened to elite conservative social circles and conservative think tanks — the first steps to influencing public policy and national opinion. Bail touched upon this in the current study after analysing publicly available information on the organisations’ membership, which revealed troubling crossovers between fringe and mainstream organisations.

Four quick thoughts:

1. It sounds like there could be some importance influence of social networks. These fringe groups may be on the edges of public discourse but they have connections or means to which to reach more mainstream media sources. How much of this reporting is built on previous personal connections?

2. This sounds like a clever use of plagiarism software. Such software is intended to catch students in using published material incorrectly but it can also be used to track common quotes, phrases, and narratives.

3. In general, how much does the media today rely on press releases and reports from mainstream or fringe groups without interviews, fact-checking, and sorting through all the information?

4. Would a similar study involving elite liberal social circles and think tanks find similar things?

French suburbs moving away from mainstream French culture

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The American suburbs are pretty unique compared to suburbs in other countries. For example, a new study shows that residents in French suburbs are moving away from mainstream French culture:

Local communities in France’s immigrant suburbs increasingly organize themselves on Islamic lines rather than following the values of the secular republic, according to a major new sociological study.

Respected political scientist Gilles Kepel, a specialist in the Muslim world, led a team of researchers in a year-long project in Clichy-sous-Bois and Montfermeil, two Paris suburbs that exploded in riots in 2005.

The resulting study ? “Suburbs of the Republic” ? found that religious institutions and practices are increasingly displacing those of the state and the French Republic, which has a strong secular tradition.

Families from the districts, which are mainly populated by immigrants from north and west Africa and their descendants, regularly attend mosque, fast during Ramadan and boycott school meals that are not “halal.”

American culture is dominated by suburban themes and values while this study suggests the suburbs of France are the alienated portion of society. The study also looked into why the alienation is present, particularly following the 2005 riots:

While the resentment in the poor suburbs has social roots, essentially the residents’ virtual exclusion from a tight jobs market, the rioters expressed frustration in a vocabulary “borrowed from Islam’s semantic register.”

Islamic values are replacing those of a republic which failed to deliver on its promise of “equality”, and the residents of the suburbs increasingly do not see themselves as French, the researchers said.

American culture has some similar issues: we talk about equal opportunities, which is something different than “equality” in the French sense – compare “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” to “liberty, equality, fraternity.” Of course, this doesn’t exactly happen: the American system is set up so that certain groups have fewer opportunities over time. The disconnect between official rhetoric and the actual situation on the ground tends to lead to problems at some point.

So which country will effectively tackle these issues first: the French dealing with immigrants in the suburbs or the United States with poor inner-city neighborhoods? Does either country have the political will to truly tackle the root problems rather than simply treating the symptoms?

Islamic groups in Chicago suburbs discuss zoning, the building of mosques

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In the last year or so, several proposals to build mosques in the Chicago region have met with zoning resistance (see this example in unincorporated Lombard). In order to ease some of these issues, several Islamic groups in DuPage County met to discuss how to better present their cases for new religious buildings:

Members of several suburban Islamic organizations heard from experts in land use and zoning law Saturday at a convention designed to help groups work together and understand the process of building new religious institutions…

The event comes as the county board recently reviewed five zoning cases from Muslim communities looking to construct worship spaces in unincorporated areas of DuPage County.

A representative of one such group said fostering relationships with elected officials and keeping the public informed are key to improving a mosque construction plan’s chances of success. Bringing up the possibility of religious prejudice or Isalmophobia, is counterproductive, said Hani Atassi of Muslim Educational and Cultural Center of America, which won approval in March to build a mosque along 91st street near Willowbrook…

Many concerns raised by elected officials and prospective mosque neighbors are legitimate ones about parking, noise, extra light and stormwater management, said Kathleen Foley, a fellow at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, who spoke at Saturday’s summit.

“Not all opponents are bigots. Not all of them are driven by fear,” Foley said. “Sometimes parking concerns are just parking concerns.”

The suggestion here is that the zoning resistance is not due to fears of mosques or Muslims but rather is typical suburban NIMBYism. And the answer to dealing with this is to try to improve relations with neighbors so that the new building is not seen as a threat to the neighborhood.

Is there some way to better balance local zoning rules with the interests of religious groups? Mosques are not the only buildings that have had difficulty getting past zoning boards; there was a recent article about churches that have encountered similar difficulties, whether in suburban neighborhoods or downtowns that communities would rather space go to tax-generating commercial space. The larger issue here is suburban NIMBYism that often seems resistant to any changes, let alone the construction of more houses or religious buildings. When we hear that “sometimes parking concerns are just parking concerns,” we should be discussing whether these parking concerns are really justified.