Rev. Edward Cronin was in the middle of parish business last February when the pastor of the Reformed Church of Palos Heights called to tell him that the Reformed congregation finally had a buyer for its building.
A Muslim organization wanted to turn the church into a mosque, the first in the suburb’s 41-year history.
“I said, `Oh boy. I wonder how our people might react to this,”‘ recalled Cronin, acknowledging that he, let alone his parishioners at St. Alexander’s Catholic Church, knew very little about the faith.
Cronin said Rev. Peter Semeyn, pastor of the Reformed Church, knew his people would struggle with it too. “He said, `What are we going to do?”‘ Cronin recounted.
So began the drama that would put Palos Heights in the national spotlight as a community that fought its first mosque, with some residents making such derogatory comments that the mayor apologized for the entire town.
Despite attempts by Cronin, Semeyn and other clergy to dampen the early fears, the situation grew into a debacle.
It reached its height last month, when the Palos Heights City Council voted to buy out the Al Salam Mosque Foundation’s real estate deal so the city could convert the church into a recreation center. The $200,000 deal later was vetoed by Mayor Dean Koldenhoven–over the mosque’s protests–bringing him praise for protecting religious freedom.
Meanwhile, a Tuesdaydeadline on the real estate contract is looming, and mosque representatives say they are considering three options: walking away from the contract; buying the church building despite their fears of vandalism; or suing the city for meddling in the matter.
“I feel bad for the mosque and for the people of Palos Heights because of the politics going on there,” said Rouhy Shalabi, foundation attorney and spokesman. “Nothing is peaceful there when it comes to politics.”
The stage was set nearly a decade ago, when two warring camps formed in the Palos Heights City Council, pitting a group of aldermen against Koldenhoven’s predecessor.
And the personalities of the residents who had moved to the suburb of 12,000 to escape diversity and of the Muslims who wanted to be accepted and understood played key roles in the controversy, which had an undercurrent of religious prejudice.
The main characters are: Koldenhoven, a 65-year-old bricklayer who won election three years ago on a promise that he would bring respect to the town; and his longtime rival, Ald. Jim Murphy, 43, a state law-enforcement investigator who brokered the buyout deal that the Muslims accepted before Koldenhoven’s veto.
The two had been friendly–each fathered a child with serious health problems–until a misunderstanding nearly three years ago. Murphy was stabbed in the carotid artery with a screwdriver while working security in a downtown parking garage. He remembers asking Koldenhoven not to talk to the news media about the attack so he could heal before fielding calls.
When he saw Koldenhoven’s comments about him in the paper the next day, “I knew he was less than honest with me,” Murphy said. “I never really forgot it.”
Koldenhoven denies Murphy made such a request.
A City Council Zoning Committee member before his election as mayor and a Republican precinct captain prior to that, Koldenhoven said he has always tried to live up to the civics classes he took at Christian private schools.
So when he heard of the mosque contract, his initial thought was to make the deal go as smoothly as possible.
“I thought to myself, `This will be the test of me being mayor,”‘ Koldenhoven recalled. “I knew it wasn’t going to be a cakewalk. … The culture and the ethnic backgrounds are different, and people fear what is different.”
Murphy blames Koldenhoven for not informing the council, or citizens, soon enough.
“He’s known the [property] was for sale since March 1998…. He sat on it,” Murphy said.
Murphy was one of a few council members who began a campaign to try to break the real estate deal between the mosque and the church, saying the church was needed for an expanded recreation center.
The movement began around the same time that a Zoning Committee meeting was called to discuss the mosque’s request for a special-use permit. The Reformed Church already had one, but Shalabi wanted assurance that the mosque would have no problems holding services and classes.
Shalabi was prepared to explain the plan at the May 23 meeting, but he was taken aback by the tone of the questions.
“Where is the money coming from?” asked resident Dan Rice, according to transcripts.
“We all see these movies about the Far East. Do you actually announce [the call to prayer] on a loudspeaker?” asked Ald. Julie Corsi, a Murphy ally who chaired the meeting.
Corsi, in explaining to Shalabi why a special-use permit might be required, noted that the mosque’s main day of worship is Friday.
“What you are proposing is like upside down,” she said, according to transcripts. “Yours is on Friday, and then you are not going to use it on Sunday.”
Shalabi responded: “If I may, let me outwardly and respectfully disagree with you. There’s absolutely no difference…. I think we need to be sensitive to religions that are other than our own and respect them.”
Shalabi, an Oak Lawn attorney, president of the Arab-American Bar Association of Illinois and member of the Chicago Commission on Human Relations, said it was difficult to remain professional under the pointed questioning.
“I hope a lot of this is attributable to a lack of understanding,” he said. “The [Muslim] community is already here.”
Shalabi explained in the meeting that the foundation has less than 300 members, but many more Muslims who live in the southwest suburbs would stop in the mosque to pray, particularly on Fridays. He estimated that on a busy day, 500 people would worship there. The Reformed Church building has a congregation of 700, so there should be plenty of room, he told the committee.
The foundation’s goal was to establish a place of worship, not stir a political storm, he said.
But the verbal sparring got worse at following council meetings, and Koldenhoven cringes when he remembers one of the worst comments he heard: “Go back to where you came from.”
Although the mayor eventually spoke out against the remarks, he acknowledges that he did not attempt immediately to steer the dialogue to higher ground.
“I let the people have freedom of speech,” he said. “I don’t allow personal attacks, I don’t allow booing, but that’s their freedom of speech.”
Muslim residents who went to subsequent meetings tried to defend their faith and right to worship in the city. Some struggled with the decision to speak out against their community. Edward Hassan, a Palos Heights businessman, worried that his comments would be misconstrued as attacking, but he eventually reached his limit.
“You’re making a joke out of yourselves,” he told the council at a meeting to discuss the buyout.
By early June, the council had voted to explore the possibility of compensating the mosque foundation’s expenses so that the city could take over the real estate contract and buy the property for a recreation center.
The proposal to offer the foundation $200,000 was never meant as a buyout, Murphy contends, but was to cover legal and other expenses to allow the foundation to find another site.
According to Murphy, the mayor had two chances to stop the deal from reaching the mosque: when it was first suggested June 6, and when the $200,000 offer was made to the mosque June 20.
Koldenhoven said he never thought the mosque would consider the buyout, so he saw no need to veto it until after it was accepted.
“I don’t know why they did that,” he said, remembering a phone call from Shalabi.
“He gave me a four-minute speech about why I should not veto it,” Koldenhoven said.
At that point in behind-the-scenes negotiations, the foundation had been hoping for $300,000 to cover expenses, but it eventually said it would accept the $200,000 offered.
“I told him, `I’ll veto it down to a dollar,”‘ said Koldenhoven.
Shalabi said he was stunned by the vow because, although Koldenhoven told foundation members he thought the offer was an insult, the mayor never told them he would veto it.
The foundation thought that by accepting the offer, the city would get its recreation center and the matter would end peacefully, Shalabi said.
“We thought he would say, `OK, at least I did my part, but I respect their wishes,”‘ said Shalabi. “Up until then, we took it as an open, viable offer.”
The issue was never about money, Shalabi said. He said the foundation wanted Palos Heights to stand by its offer so that members could establish a mosque in a community where they were wanted.
But Koldenhoven said he is confident that the Al Salam Mosque Foundation will reconsider its position, honor its contract to buy the property and become the suburb’s first mosque.
“We don’t want to be known as the town that kicked the mosque out,” he said. “People have got to look in the mirror. It was a wakeup call. This is not who we want to be.”
