It was here, in this midsize college town in the dead center of Tennessee, that a right-wing effort to ban Islamic law found one of its first sponsors. Here, too, a congressman co-
sponsored a plan to “defund Muslim ‘refugees' ” and local residents sued to block construction of the only mosque, a fight that ended at the Supreme Court.
The town's Muslims carried on through all of that, raising their children, saying their prayers, teaching at college, filling people's prescriptions and filling their tanks, contributing to the civic life in a city of 126,000. They felt the familiar grief and fear of reprisal last year when a Muslim man killed four Marines in Chattanooga, 90 minutes away.
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