A federal lawsuit in the US state of Mississippi asserted that the decision of not allowing the construction of the first mosque in Horn Lake was motivated by anti-Muslim bias.
The state’s Jackson TV affiliate, CBS, reported that the American Civil Liberties Union in Mississippi has filed a lawsuit with the Northern District Court on behalf of two Muslim men who want to build the Baitullah Ibrahim Mosque in Horn Lake.
Earlier this year, the city’s planning commission recommended that the mosque site plan be rejected due to allegations and concerns about inadequate water supply for fire sprinklers and the potential for noise and impact on traffic.
The lawsuit said, “Despite the pretexts for the decision, the board members did not work to conceal the real reason for their refusal to approve the anti-Muslim bias project, as City Council member John E. Jones Jr. told a local newspaper that the rejection of the scheme was only for Muslims.”
The lawsuit asserted that the officials had violated the US Constitution by rejecting the constitutional rights of the men who wanted to build the mosque, namely Maher Abu Rashid and Riyadh Al-Khayat.
