On June 22, the Justice Department indicted a Texas man of threatening a Tennessee mosque that is currently under construction. According to the indictment, last September, Javier A. Correa left a message on the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro’s phone allegedly saying: “On Sept. 11, 2011, there’s going to be a bomb in the building.” This is just the latest salvo in a long battle fought by opponents of this mosque in Murfreesboro, Tennessee. Opponents of the mosque worry about radical Islam and Sharia law: “We don’t want Shariah law. We don’t want a Constitution-free zone in Rutherford County [Tennessee],” said attorney Joe Brandon, Jr., to National Public Radio.
Yet the fight in Murfreesboro is nothing new. Muslim communities across the country have had to deal with angry opponents of the construction of mosques in their communities. As Kathleen Foley of the Institute of Social Policy and Understanding writes in her report on the American mosque: “Many myths have emerged regarding mosques in the United States, including that they are sources of radicalization among American Muslims, that they are led by extremist clergy, and that they host practices that border on the occult.”
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