"Last week, the zoning board in Bayonne, New Jersey—just across New York Harbor from Sunset Park, Brooklyn—voted to deny a variance to Muslim residents who wanted to convert a warehouse into a mosque. The hearing had been moved to Bayonne High School, to accommodate a large crowd, and wound up lasting six hours. When a group of Muslims stood to pray as the meeting convened, a group of Christians stood “in response” and recited the Lord’s Prayer, according to the Times. At the microphone, one opponent of the proposed mosque asked the board to press its organizers on what they believed. Another read violent passages out of the Koran. One woman asked, “How many people have died because of this so-called religion?” There was testimony from Coptic Christians whose relatives had been murdered by Muslims in Egypt, and who wanted that violence kept away from Bayonne. The mosque’s supporters needed five votes, but they got only four. “The Muslim Brotherhood was brought up in this meeting, for chrissakes,” someone said early on. The great New Jersey political reporter Matt Katz, now of WNYC, pointed out that this countering of the grandiose with the profane was “the Jersey-est thing said so far.”
Taking Stock of Hate Under Trump - The New Yorker
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