“If we do not treat a mosque the same as a synagogue or church then the church will be next”

Collin Hansen suggests we think twice about the highly-publicized opposition to mosques in places like downtown New York and Murfreesboro, Tennessee:

“If we do not treat a mosque the same as a synagogue or church then the church will be next,” said Bruce Strom, executive director for Administer Justice, based in Elgin, Illinois, outside Chicago. “In fact, the church is often attacked on some of the same grounds, not wanting a particular race to be in a particular area, [such as] Koreans on the North Shore, Hispanics in the western suburbs, and African Americans in the near South Side.”

…

John Mauck, a lawyer in Chicago..., advises churches on how to work with local governments to secure building permission. Like Strom, he sees legal self-interest for Christians to support Muslims seeking to build mosques.

“As America becomes secularized, hostility towards believers has increased significantly,” Mauck says. “Our free exercise liberties are largely indivisible. If they are not free to build, then we will lose that freedom eventually.”

Yet Mauck sees other motivations with global consequences. He says that when an American government blocks Muslims from building a mosque, the news spreads to predominantly Islamic countries around the world. As a result, Christians missionaries in these countries face threats of retaliation. And barring Muslims from building mosques in the West certainly can’t help Christians lobbying for permission to build churches in closed and otherwise hostile Islamic nations.

Read Hansen’s post here.

I admit a visceral reaction to Muslim plans to build a 13-story Islamic center 2 blocks from where the Twin Towers once stood. Imagine a new Operation Rescue headquarters planned for a former abortion clinic where an abortion doctor had been killed by an activist. OR could release all the disclaimers they wanted, emphasizing that the killer was in no way reflecting the principles of OR and the larger prolife movement. It wouldn’t matter. The media and the public would see OR’s move as triumphal.

Still, I’m grateful for Hansen’s post. It helps me think through this thing instead of just reacting viscerally. I’d welcome comments at the Facebook page for Get Anchored.