OPINION: An old story: the fight for tolerance

The Rev. Thomas W. Goodhue is executive director of the Long Island Council of Churches.

Do you want a mosque in your neighborhood? Should that matter?

Some residents of Bethpage have objected to plans for a second mosque in their community. This may have prompted the Town of Oyster Bay to inspect Masjid al-Baqi, which has been on Central Avenue for 11 years, and then close it for alleged code violations.

It's reasonable to expect houses of worship to abide by health and safety rules, especially during high holidays such as Ramadan, when more people than usual are present. It's also reasonable to expect a congregation to minimize noise and parking problems that can annoy neighbors, as Masjid al-Baqi has tried to do.

Some objections, however, are unreasonable. "Why do we need another one of those?" some may ask, without questioning why a town needs Assembly of God, Baptist, Catholic, Church of Christ, Lutheran, Greek Orthodox, Presbyterian and United Methodist churches - even though Jesus prayed that all who follow him "might be one."

As we're seeing across the country, some object to mosques because they blame all Muslims for the actions of terrorists. By this token, no community should have a church, since some Christians took part in the Holocaust and blew up one another in Northern Ireland. And no town should have synagogue, since a Jewish prophet slaughtered the priests of Baal. If only pacifists had a right to worship, nobody but Bahais, Quakers and Jains could build sanctuaries. I take that back: The abolitionist John Brown was a Quaker and a terrorist, wasn't he?

Often, it seems, arguments against a new congregation are little more than, "I just don't want it here." Perhaps if I had lost a close friend at the World Trade Center, I'd feel the same, but what difference should that make? I don't like every church that has been built on Long Island, but I don't have the right to determine which ones should exist. You should be glad I don't have this power - because I'm not always right.

New faith communities usually encounter resistance. My ancestor Hannah Goodhue was jailed in 1679 for building a Congregational church in Essex, Mass., in defiance of a court that claimed Puritans already had enough congregations on Cape Ann. Some Protestants on Long Island expressed dismay when Catholics "invaded" their suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s and built huge sanctuaries, schools and rectories that dwarfed their own.

In one Suffolk community where I was a pastor, non-Pentecostal Christians objected to the expansion of a church from Sarah Palin's denomination. In Iraq, Sunni Muslims have been known to reject Shia as neighbors. Back closer to home, in Nassau County, I have heard Reform Jews on Long Island castigate public officials for allowing orthodox synagogues to "take over our community." Change is almost always painful, particularly if your own congregation is stagnant or shrinking.

Some people who oppose mosques may have the impression that Islam is a foreign religion. Too few Americans know that Muslims have been here longer than their own ancestors. Some settled along the Peedee River in the Carolinas and among Spanish colonies in Florida, more than a century before my Puritan forefathers landed in Massachusetts. Others were brought to our shores in chains by Christians.

Some Christians believe Muslims worship a different god because they call the Almighty Allah, but this is simply the word for "god" in Arabic - and it's how Christians throughout the Middle East pray. And most non-Muslim Americans and most non-American Muslims don't know that Muslims, too, were victims of al-Qaida on 9/11.

So if you want to insist that the mosque in your neighborhood meet the building codes, fine. But perhaps you'd also like to visit the Islamic Center of Long Island in Westbury next week. On Sept. 11, members will be dedicating a memorial to all the victims of attacks nine years ago, and reminding us that Islam - and all true faiths - call us to build peace.