During a tense meeting on Tuesday, conservatives pleaded with the Frisco City Council to halt the construction of a two-story, 43,575 square-foot mosque and torpedo plans to build Hindu and Jain temples in the area.
Texas native Larry Brock, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel and pardoned J6er, noted that he is well acquainted with the Islamist worldview, in part because he lived under Sharia law for seven years while working for Saudi Arabia. He, like other opponents who raised concerns with the city council, emphasized that such a worldview is at odds with the one that still predominates in the United States.
‘I don’t want to bring any mosque to Texas ever.’
Brock went farther in his criticism, suggesting that by approving the relevant projects recommended by the city’s planning and zoning commission, city councilors would be putting themselves and the city at risk of unlawfully “aiding and abetting a terrorist organization and providing them material support.”
Edward Jacob Lang, a pardoned J6er from Florida wearing a tactical vest, similarly sounded off against Islam and accused the Frisco City Council of “selling out this country” and “inviting the enemy to eat at the table with you.”
After Lang railed against the perceived ascendancy of alien cultures in Texas and was escorted out while screaming that he would burn down a mosque if he lived in Texas, Joel Tenney — an Iowa evangelist in a 10-gallon hat — asked what it meant to be Texan and suggested that mosques are representative of a worldview incompatible with America.
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Muslims engaged in prayer at a Mosque in Plano, Texas. RONALDO SCHEMIDT/AFP/Getty Images
Tenney, an outspoken supporter of President Donald Trump, claimed at the outset that he came from “Texas royalty” — that he apparently not only descended from Sam Houston, the first and third president of the Texas Republic, but from frontiersman Davy Crockett.
The evangelical preacher claimed further that he was “kidnapped and held hostage in 2021 by Islamists in the Middle East while on a missions trip to take care of the Coptic widows and fatherless,” apparently referring to the families of the Coptic martyrs beheaded by ISIS in Libya.
After signaling that he had deep roots in the state and good cause to resent Islam, Tenney stated, “I don’t want to bring any mosque to Texas ever. We shouldn’t have one here. It’s incompatible with what it means to be an American.”
Tenney, convinced that the construction of mosques and pagan temples would change the “structure and the fabric” of the state, insinuated that the ideal way forward for Muslims in America is conversion and assimilation, citing his Indian sister-in-law’s transformation from a Muslim migrant into a Christian, English-speaking, naturalized patriot.
Brandon Burden, the “lead prophet” at Kingdom Life, echoed this sentiment, stressing that Muslims “need to assimilate into the culture and not take it over.”
Some speakers pushed back against such criticism during the meeting.
Muslim Frisco resident Yameen Ahmed, for instance, condemned “anti-Muslim rhetoric” and said, “I hear lies that we are terrorists, rapists, and fraudsters. I reject every one of these lies.”
Yoga Gudivada, formerly of India, attempted to reassure Frisco residents that the planned Hindu temple would be mutually beneficial, stating that “it will serve the broader Frisco community.”
The city councilors chose ultimately not to challenge the zoning commission’s recommendations, thereby enabling the mosque and temple projects to advance on sites zoned decades ago for future places of worship.
Frisco Mayor Jeff Cheney said that there was no legal basis to appeal the planning decisions.
“Planning and zoning’s role is to execute on the ordinances and policies that the governing body of the city council has put in place. They have done their job here,” said Cheney. “The case has met all of the requirements that city council, and city councils before, have put in place and they approved it under an administrative act.”
Richard Abernathy, an attorney for the city, said that if the council instead overturned previously decided zoning decisions, it would expose itself to lawsuits, reported the Dallas Morning News.
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