Feds Slap Des Plaines With Lawsuit for Blocking Mosque

The U. S. Department of Justice says that the City of Des Plaines violated the religious rights of Bosnian Sufi Muslims when the city refused the group’s request to build a mosque and community center in an industrial area.

Cook County Record reported that federal prosecutors filed their complaint on Wednesday, charging that Des Plaines officials broke federal law under the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, when the city refused to allow the American Islamic Center to renovate a vacant office building to be used as a mosque.

The AIC is a non-profit organization which represents Bosnian Sufi Muslims who fled Yugoslavia during a war there in the mid-1990s.

The federal complaint accuses city officials of applying more stringent zoning and parking standards to the Islamic group than non-Islamic religious organizations, when city aldermen voted 5-3 in 2013 to deny the Bosnian Sufi Muslims request to convert a former insurance brokerage at 1645 Birchwood Avenue.

Immediately following that vote, the American Islamic Center filed a lawsuit against the city for its zoning denial.

Since 2006, the U.S. Justice complaint noted that the city granted permission to three churches, a Buddhist temple and two private schools to build facilities in former commercial buildings in other areas of the city, Cook County Record reported.

By applying stricter criteria to the AIC, the city treated the Islamic center’s request differently than it did other religious organizations. As a result, the Bosnian Sufi Muslims have had no place to worship, pray, perform weddings or funerals.

The complaint asks the court to require the city of Des Plaines to allow the Islamic center to proceed with its purchase of the Birchwood property and convert it into a house of worship.

Meanwhile, the city issued a statement Thursday stating, “Des Plaines considers cultural and religious diversity to be one of the community’s greatest strengths.” The city also expressed that it would “respond to the lawsuit accordingly.”