Building a mosque in the US:

"This spring, officials in Bridgewater, N.J., opposed a plan to turn an old inn, formerly used for weddings and political events, into the town’s only mosque. Rather than stand up to the opposition, stirred up partly by the Tea Party, the mayor, the township council and the planning board raced to change the zoning rules so that a house of worship would no longer be a permitted use on the inn’s property.  The application for the mosque was filed in January. Ignoring established procedures, officials rushed the zoning change so it would be completed before May 5, the effective date of a new state statute on development regulations that would have allowed the mosque to proceed under the old zoning law.  In defending its move, the township prepared a “reexamination report” that raised hazy new traffic concerns even though an earlier report found no such issues, and both the town’s traffic expert and the county’s planning board found that the mosque would have only a minimal effect on traffic. The debate has centered mostly on safety and quality-of-life objections. Mosques, like other religious institutions, are not exempt from such considerations, but objections must be backed up by studies or other hard data (missing here) and may not be used as a pretext to discriminate against a religion seeking to build a house of worship.  In June, a federal trial judge properly allowed a lawsuit challenging the town’s actions on constitutional and statutory grounds to go forward. Meanwhile, the Justice Department is conducting an investigation into whether the town’s actions violated the 2000 federal law that bars use of zoning restrictions to unreasonably limit religious structures, a possible prelude to the government’s entry into the case. Over the past month, the department has secured settlements in similar zoning disputes in Georgia and Virginia, allowing proposed mosques to proceed.""