You’d think Arabs pulling off takeover, rather than just sharing in Chicago

I have to admit that the big difference between the Chicago I knew as a kid some four to five decades ago and the one that exists now is the presence of Arabs and, in some cases, Islam.

It doesn’t phase me anymore to see a woman walking down the aisle of the supermarket while wearing a hijab, particularly if she has a slew of kids trailing her whom she’s trying to keep from running roughshod all over the store.

JUST ABOUT LIKE any other mother who happens to include grocery shopping among her day’s errands.

And I also know enough that not every single Arab is Muslim – there are those whose families at some point in time figured that assimilation to a new country included a religious conversion. Besides, most Arabs I have known had their families come to this country to get away from the very same religious fanatics many of us express fear about.

 

Considering that I always viewed the Chicago area’s great strength as being its multi-ethnic mix of people, I can’t help but think of Arabs as just another ethnic group – and one whose cuisine definitely enhances the style of edibles we are exposed to.

Unless you’re the type of person who thinks Chinese orange chicken or Taco Bell is the extent to which you wish to be exposed to anything "foreign?"

THE SAD THING is that probably is the mentality of some people whose criticism is shouted out so loud that we presume they’re a majority. They’re the ones most likely who keep giving Donald Trump poll leads in his multiple candidate presidential campaigns – even though all the other candidates put together dwarf him.

That’s the thought we ought to remind ourselves of when we consider the latest dispute in suburban Palos Park (the community that feels like it was built out in the middle of the forest preserves) that someone wants to develop a mosque there.

The Muslim American Society bought a property that once was a First Church of Christ Scientist, but had literally been sold off. As in that church didn’t want the property any longer. Nobody forced them out.

Yet there are those who want to think that this is somehow evidence that Muslims are desecrating a Christian church and using it for their own nefarious purposes.

THE SAD PART is that this issue isn’t new. It isn’t just the crackpots being inspired by Donald Trump’s “stupid talk” about Muslims and Arabs not belonging in this country.

I remember back nearly a couple decades ago when officials wanted to build a new structure in nearly Palos Heights to provide a mosque for the growing Arab population in the southwest suburbs – only to have the issue burst into a bigoted mess.

To his credit, then-Mayor Dean Koldenhaven thwarted an effort to use tax dollars to buy out the would-be mosque developers, believing it to be motivated purely by religious prejudice. Of course, he wound up losing his re-election bid, and there are those local residents who remain convinced they did the right thing by doing so.

Such sentiments continue to exist whenever someone brings up the concept of a mosque. Some sentiments just can’t wither away, no matter how stupid.

FROM A PERSONAL perspective, perhaps this is an evolution – since it would seem that Islam is now the exotic faith that scares people, not Catholicism. Although Trump’s willingness to smack about Pope Francis makes me wonder if he wouldn’t mind anti-Catholic sentiment raising its ugly head to bolster his presidential fantasies.

And as someone of Mexican ethnic origins who also has been included as subject matter for Trump tirades, it would seem that the nativists of our society are truly willing to extend their net of hostility towards anybody they can snag.

So as for the ongoing fight over developing a mosque in Palos Park, the details are all so similar that the entire battle seems so predictable. And boring to hear about.

You’d think the xenophobes of our society would come up with something new just to keep themselves intrigued. Although I suppose so long as spewing the same nativist nonsense works time and time again, they’ll keep spewing. Until we, the true majority of our society, come to our senses and stop giving such people any mind.

  -30-

DuPage vote on mosque just the first step, but it also is a necessary one

DuPage County officials took actions Tuesday that will displease the conservative ideologues of our society, whom I would guess are now looking for other ways to throw up roadblocks to a group that wants to build a mosque in the outer suburbs.

Following months of debate and stalling maneuvers inherent to the political process, the DuPage County Board of Commissioners voted in favor of a request by the Muslim Educational Cultural Center of America to allow them to proceed with plans to build a mosque in an unincorporated area near suburban Willowbrook.

THE COUNTY BOARD also took another vote to reject the desires of the ideologues to keep the issue before a county zoning board for further study – where it could have been bottled up in perpetuity.

Now I am not overly religious. But I can respect the idea that someone should be allowed to worship as they see fit. I also accept the idea that the ethnic composition of this country is changing, and that the Chicago area has always been a mishmash of groups that might not be found so prominently elsewhere.

Which makes me think that the types of churches that will be built in the area is going to change. If that means some communities that might in the past have considered Islam and the presence of a mosque to be totally alien are going to have to change their way of thinking, then so be it.

That is why I am glad to see the county board, by a 13-5 vote, didn’t play along with the people who in recent months have been complaining they don’t want a mosque near their community because they don’t want people who are Muslim coming nearby.

IT WOULD HAVE been giving in to elements of our society that just can’t handle the direction our society is headed, and whose opposition IS the problem – rather than anything resembling a solution.

But I couldn’t help but notice in Chicago Tribune reports about the vote that the governmental process is not complete.

The group that currently operates out of a commercial office space near a K-mart store (how does a ‘blue light special’ mesh with Islam?) now has to apply for a building permit.

Which means the ideologues can now say they’re not voting against a mosque, per se. They may just start using overly strict interpretations of building codes to claim that whatever plan for a mosque is put forth somehow does not comply.

I’M NOT CLAIMING that the group (which cutely calls itself by its acronym, MECCA) ought to receive automatic approval for its building plans. I’m just hoping that Tuesday’s vote puts aside the opposition to the idea of a mosque in general.

But I’m also realistic enough to know that it might not. Ideologues tend to be hard-headed and willing to fight for a cause, no matter how obsolete, long past the point when sensible people move on with life.

I’m wondering how many people will manage to take offense at the group that praised Allah and said they “trust what he does” as their reaction to the DuPage County Board’s granting of approval to the general idea of a mosque.

Then again, there once was a time when it was the Catholic Church that was considered somehow exotic and “un-American” and unworthy of being a part of the overall community. The rhetoric we now hear about Muslims sounds so much like the trash-talk of the past against Catholics that the similarities are eerie.

NOW, CATHOLICS ARE so mainstream to this country that even some branches of the Ku Klux Klan will accept them as members – provided that they’re white and have the appropriate sentiment against African-American people.

This is one of those battleground “issues” that is going to look absolutely ridiculous some five decades or so from now. People are going to look back and wonder how anyone could have been paranoid enough to think that a mosque, in and of itself, would be a problem.

It is a good thing that the DuPage County Board didn’t wind up taking a vote on Tuesday that would have made it look ridiculous in future years.

  -30-

Erecting the “Keep Out!” signs: Do we mean the Asian Carp? Or the Muslims?

A U.S. District Court judge issued a ruling this week that has the Asian Carp fanatics all upset.

By “fanatics,” I’m referring to the people from surrounding Midwestern states who have been filing lawsuits against Chicago-area officials, contending that if the dreaded species of fish that has the potential to devastate the ecosystem and kill off existing life in the Great Lakes actually makes it there, it will be Chicago’s fault.

THESE PEOPLE, FROM places such as Wisconsin, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Ohio and (most intensely, Michigan) want the shipping locks in the Chicago-area closed down. They have been engaging in a campaign that seems to want to blame Chicago for the presence of Asian Carp in the area, and any damage that may be caused.

Those locks are what allow for a direct connection between Lake Michigan and the Mississippi River. It is Chicago’s location on the lake at the end of that system that largely accounts for why Chicago is CHICAGO, and not merely Milwaukee, Detroit or Pittsburgh.

Because the Asian Carp have managed to get into the Mississippi River, then detoured into the Illinois River, it is likely that they could someday get into Lake Michigan, then flow into all of the Great Lakes.

That is why critics are now denouncing the fact that Chicago altered the flow of the Chicago River away from Lake Michigan. In doing so, engineers also set up the system that allows a boat carrying goods to get from the lake to the Illinois River, then down to the “Mighty Mississippi.”

I WILL BE the first to admit that if the Asian Carp get into the Great Lakes, it will significantly alter environmental conditions, and not in a good way. But federal Judge Robert Dow this week ruled against ordering the locks. While he agreed the Asian Carp are dangerous, he also said there is no evidence that the species of fish are on the verge of entering the Great Lakes.

In short, he’s not going to devastate the Chicago economy just because of a problem that could occur if the Army Corps of Engineers winds up being unsuccessful in the various methods they have been using in recent years to keep the Asian Carp away from Lake Michigan.

The ruling shows some common sense – not wanting to make changes just because someone perceives a problem in the making. Now if we could only have the same line of logic applied out in west suburban DuPage County, where officials are considering proposals to allow religious groups to construct new buildings for use as mosques.

It means we’re talking about people of Muslim religious faiths. Which means that the local political types are putting them through intense scrutiny.

EARLIER THIS WEEK, a county zoning board of appeals recommended against allowing a mosque to be built in an unincorporated area near West Chicago.

Officially, they’re saying the well water system and septic tanks set up for that area could not handle the demands placed upon it by a new church-type building.

 In theory, that means the Islamic Center for Western Suburbs could still get approved when the full DuPage County Board considers the issue when they meet some time in January. The full board could elect to ignore that recommendation (which came by a 6-1 vote).

Yet my experience in dealing with these suburban government panels is that these zoning boards are the ones that do something resembling a detailed study of the issue. Most of the actual county board members are going to be inclined to trust the recommendation and affirm it – which would mean killing off this mosque proposal near West Chicago.

NOW I’M SURE that county officials will limit their rhetoric on the issue to claims that the building would mess with the septic and well systems. They’re going to claim that their own religious beliefs aren’t a factor in this issue.

Which means they will have learned from past municipalities that have considered (and rejected) proposals for mosque construction. Many of those towns (remember Palos Heights?) came off looking shallow and bigoted by letting their ignorance of Islam run amok.

But I also don’t doubt that a desire to keep their community just as it is, and resist the growing Muslim population developing in the southwest and western suburbs of Chicago is a factor.

I couldn’t help but notice that one of the measures also being considered by that same zoning board is one that would restrict any new religious building construction in DuPage County to unincorporated areas that do not have residential developments. More discussion on that issue will come at a hearing scheduled for Dec. 13.

IT SOUNDS LIKE putting any new mosques that manage to work their way into the area out in the middle of nowhere, in areas that aren’t exactly convenient to worshipers. There won’t be Muslims walking from their homes to their mosques for religious services in the way that some Christians attend church services right in their neighborhoods.

This situation reeks of people who see a “problem” developing in the growth of another religion within our society, and they’re trying to erect the barricades to prevent it from gaining a foothold.

It’s too bad we couldn’t have a “Judge Dow” type come in and tell these people that there is NO imminent problem to be dealt with. It’s really too bad that we couldn’t have common sense prevail and people realize there probably isn’t any problem developing at all – unless the government bureaucratic-types start putting up all kinds of regulations that cause the problem.

  -30-