A note: The new Auburn Islamic Center is not bypassing the City of Auburn’s process. The project has been moving through the City’s established approval, permitting, and building processes, just as other developments do.

This petition is not a response to widespread community opposition -- because there isn’t any. Auburn has overwhelmingly been a peaceful, welcoming, and supportive home for its Muslim neighbors for generations.

Rather, this petition is intended to push back on misinformation and negativity being spread by a very small number of people and to affirm something that should unite all of us: religious freedom, equal treatment, and respect for our neighbors.

If you have questions about the proposed Islamic Center, we encourage you to ask. Talk to your favorite Auburn Muslim and learn more about the project and the community it will serve.

And if you don’t have a favorite Auburn Muslim yet, this may be a pretty good opportunity to meet one of your neighbors.

----
To the Mayor and City Council of Auburn:

Religious freedom is one of the most fundamental promises of our Constitution. It does not belong to one faith, one denomination, or one group of Americans. It belongs to all of us.

That principle matters here in Auburn, Alabama.

Muslims have lived, studied, worked, raised families, and worshiped in Auburn for more than half a century. We have records of Muslims gathering for prayer here as far back as the 1960s. In the 1980s, members of the Muslim community purchased a house on Armstrong Street and converted it into what became the Auburn Islamic Center.

That house still serves as Auburn's mosque today.

But Auburn has grown, and so has its Muslim community. Today, approximately 600 Muslims live in the Auburn and Opelika areas. The converted house on Armstrong Street, with its collection of small rooms, was never designed to accommodate congregational worship for a community of this size.

Years ago, the Muslims in Auburn purchased approximately five acres of property for a future home. The community has worked through the City's planning and approval processes for the property and proposed facility. We have followed all requirements of the City of Auburn, including a new tax for traffic managment.

The goal is remarkably ordinary: a safe, appropriate place for Muslims in Auburn to pray, gather, and park their cars.

And that is why this moment matters.

Questions about development, traffic, construction, and land use are entirely appropriate. Every development should comply with the laws and regulations that apply to it.

But once those requirements have been met, a mosque should not face additional hurdles simply because it is a mosque.

If the rules are sufficient for a church, synagogue, temple, or other place of worship, those same rules should be sufficient for an Islamic center.

This is not a petition asking anyone to agree with Islam. It is asking our community to agree on something much more fundamental: Americans of every faith are entitled to equal treatment under the law and the freedom to worship peacefully.

Religious liberty means little if we defend it only for people who believe as we do.

Auburn's Muslim community is not new. It is not an outside group arriving to "take over" our community. Muslims have been our neighbors, professors, physicians, business owners, students, engineers, parents, children, volunteers, and friends for generations.

The new Islamic center simply gives a longstanding part of our Auburn community an appropriate place to worship.

We therefore ask Mayor Ron Anders, the Auburn City Council, and other City leaders to:

• Stand by Auburn's established and lawful planning and approval processes and apply them fairly and consistently.
• Ensure that the Auburn Islamic Center is treated no differently from other religious institutions because of the faith of the people who worship there.
• Publicly affirm the right of Auburn's Muslim residents to build and worship in their new Islamic center after satisfying the same lawful requirements expected of others.
• Reject efforts to create special or duplicative barriers based on fear, misinformation, or religious prejudice.

People of faith can disagree about many things. But we should be able to agree on this:

Every faith community should have the freedom to build its place of worship, whether that's a church, synagogue, temple, or a mosque.

That is not special treatment.

That is religious freedom.

If you believe Auburn should remain a community where constitutional rights, fairness, and neighborliness apply to everyone, please add your name.

Stand with your neighbors. Stand for religious freedom. Stand for Auburn.