Chicago suburb to pay $580,000 to Muslim organisation after denying them a mosque

Four years ago, a suburb in Chicago prevented a Muslim group from converting a vacant building into a mosque. The city is now required to pay the congregation $580,000 in settlement.



In 2013, the Des Plaines’ City Council voted to deny a zoning request by The Society of American Bosnians and Herzegovinians (SABAH), a small Muslim congregation. The group sued the city for violating the Religious Land Use and Institutionalised Persons Act (RLUIPA). It is a federal law that protects religious organisations from discrimination when it comes to land use.

“Religious freedom is a fundamental right, and we will not tolerate the unlawful use of zoning or land use restrictions to infringe on that right,” Joel R Levin, Acting United States Attorney of the Northern District of Illinois, said in a statement

The case was taken up by the Justice Department and filed a lawsuit in September 2015. The complaint accused Des Plaines of discriminating against the group “on the basis of religion or religious denomination by treating land use applications by non-Muslim religious groups better than it treated SABAH’s on the basis of parking requirements and tax-exempt status.”

The suit also alleged that the city “departed from its normal practices and procedures” when denying the organisation's request.

Des Plaines settled the suit before trial and agreed to pay $580,000 to the group. Besides the monetary settlement, the suburb will be required provide training on religious land use law to its officials and employees.

However, speaking to CBS Chicago, the attorney for Des Plaines said the suburb did not admit to any wrongdoing. They simply viewed the decision to settle as "a business decision."

Imam Senad Agic, who heads SABAH, was relieved at the result of Tuesday’s settlement. “They broke our hearts when they denied us because these are Bosnian refugees who lost everything,” he told the Associated Press.



The group had found a church in nearby Franklin Park which they had converted into a worship space. Agic said the money from the settlement will “help us do renovations, construction that we need to turn the sanctuary there into a prayer hall.”

This story originally appeared on The Associated Press