People pray at the Islamic Society of Tulsa, Friday, Feb. 13, 2026, in Tulsa, Okla. (AP Photo/Brittany Bendabout)
September 9, 2026
(RNS) — In late 2009, Daisy Khan and her then-husband hoped to build a place of healing for a city still grieving over the hateful acts of the 9/11 terrorists.
They called their planned mosque and community center, modeled after Jewish community centers and YMCAs across the country, Cordoba House — a reference to a Spanish city where Muslims, Jews and Christians once coexisted peacefully.
The project was meant to counter extremism and be a powerful testament to the American promise of religious freedom and the resiliency of New Yorkers.
“We are faithful people. We are very good Americans,” Khan, a Muslim nonprofit leader, told Fox News in late 2009, when plans for the center first started to become public, according to The New York Times. “And we need to project a different message of Islam, one of tolerance, love.”
Instead, the community center, which would have been built about a five-minute walk from the former site of the World Trade Center, became a national flashpoint after critics labeled it the “Ground Zero Mosque” and launched a national movement to stop the project. That led to marches in the streets, with protesters holding up “No Sharia” signs; claims that Muslims did not deserve the same religious freedoms as other Americans; and organized efforts to stop not just the Cordoba House but any proposed mosque around the country.
“We tell Muslims that they have to integrate, and then when their institutions begin to grow, and they want to be part of the American fabric, we tell them you’re growing too much,” Khan told RNS in a recent interview.
The Cordoba House building project eventually failed in 2014. And 25 years after the 9/11 attacks, Muslim communities across the country say they are still facing opposition to mosque projects. Often, resistance is framed around similar warnings of “Sharia law” and misinformation around the faith.
“In fact, by some measures, public attitudes toward Islam have become more negative than they were immediately after the Sept. 11 attacks,” according to Pew researchers, with 42% of Americans saying Muslims have a negative impact on the country in a recent study.
Yet, most mosque projects in the U.S. are successful. The number of mosques in the U.S. has more than doubled since 9/11, going from about 1,200 in 2000 to about 2,800 in 2024, according to the Faith Communities Today Project overseen by the Hartford Institute for Religion Research, which studies congregational life in the United States.
But there is often stiff resistance.
According to RNS’s reporting, as well as other news reports, at least eight mosque expansion projects have faced anti-Muslim opposition over the past year, including large-scale resistance at public hearings and litigation.
Those projects include three mosques in Texas, and one each in New Mexico, North Carolina, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Oklahoma.
“We still get linked to 9/11. We still get linked to terrorism, and it continues on,” Khan said. “That’s my regret: Twenty-five years after 9/11, we still haven’t learned anything.”
“8 Mosques Targeted by Anti-Muslim Rhetoric, 2026” (RNS graphic/Pam Kruger)
In Broken Arrow, Oklahoma, just outside of Tulsa, leaders of a proposed mosque filed suit after a request for a zoning change to allow a mosque was denied. City officials and the local zoning board had recommended approving the project, but the City Council voted it down. In some emails, mosque opponents made claims, which the city’s mayor agreed with, that the mosque was a threat, according to the complaint filed by mosque organizers.
“It’s the same Islamophobia cycle that comes every once in a while,” Imad Enchassi, an Oklahoma City University religion professor and senior imam at the Islamic Society of Greater Oklahoma City, told RNS earlier this year. “I see a pattern in which people are being fed lies and misconceptions.”
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Two years ago, a small Muslim congregation in McKinney, Texas, proposed building a new mosque on 5.5 acres in the north Dallas suburb. The nearly 700 worshippers had outgrown their current space. City planners rejected the rezoning request over land-use concerns.
Carol Milder, chair of the Leon County Republican Party, wears a hat reading “No Sharia Allowed!” while attending a Texas State Board of Education hearing at the Barbara Jordan State Office Building in Austin, TX on Monday, June 22, 2026. (RNS photo/Angela Wang)
Most neighbors at the time raised what mosque President Yasser Wardany called “genuine concerns” about noise, traffic and parking. Only a few opposed the project using anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Hoping to be “good neighbors,” Wardany said the Islamic Association of McKinney spent the next two years reworking its plans with engineers and city staff to mitigate concerns before reapplying.
When mosque leaders returned to the city council this year, things had changed.
Dozens of critics spoke against the project at city council meetings, with some explicitly saying Muslims don’t belong in McKinney or Texas. Online, anti-Muslim activists brought large followings to rally opposition.
At a contentious city council meeting on Aug. 4, Republican Texas Rep. Keith Self, one of the founders of the Sharia Free Caucus in the U.S. Congress, spoke against the mosque, warning about “political Islam” and the alleged spread of Sharia in Texas.
Muslims pray in the gym of the new Unity Center, a former elementary school, in Lubbock, Texas. (Photo by Shaheer Ali)
The McKinney City Council ultimately voted to approve the mosque. And despite loud opposition, Wardany said he was pleased to receive support from local faith communities and neighbors. Many showed up days later to thank council members for upholding the law.
“We’re very happy that the city of McKinney Council members stood by the rule of law,” he said to RNS, “because if they don’t, then this is going to affect us in other cities, and it will be a bad precedent for them.”
It’s not a surprise that there was fierce backlash to the mosque project in McKinney, said Asma Uddin, an assistant professor of law at Michigan State University and an expert on religious liberty.
The clear underlying sentiment is: We just don’t want this mosque in our neighborhood.
Ihsan Bagby, a scholar who researches American mosques
She said that religious minorities in the United States have often faced opposition as their communities grow. The number of Muslims in Dallas-Fort Worth has grown, with about 50 new mosques being added in the past few years.
“It happened with Catholics and Jews in earlier waves of immigration,” she said. “It’s happening with Muslims in North Texas now, and growth this fast, concentrated in a state with an activist political culture, gives opponents a constant supply of fresh, visible mosque projects to organize around.”
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Opposition to the construction and expansion of mosques dates back to the 1980s. Resistance back then was small and mostly contained to immediate neighbors, says Ihsan Bagby, emeritus associate professor of Arabic and Islamic studies at the University of Kentucky.
After 9/11, anti-mosque activity surged across the country and became “very political,” Bagby explains.
“The clear underlying sentiment is: We just don’t want this mosque in our neighborhood,” he said. “And it’s gotten worse in the last decade. Clearly, clearly.”
The most recent data shows that 35% of mosques faced significant resistance from their neighborhood or city when they tried to expand or build between 2010-2019, according to the American Mosque Survey. By comparison, from 1980-2009, the average percentage of mosques that met opposition was 25%, the 2020 survey showed.
Mosque opposition campaigns often coincide with midterms or national flashpoints. But they also consistently occur outside of election cycles and under all administrations, said Saher Selod, director of research at the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding.
“And I think that’s what this constant opposition to mosques, unfortunately, is showing is that anti-Muslim sentiments are still very prominent,” Selod said.
Mosques remain relatively uncommon in the United States, making up less than 1% of the nation’s more than 350,000 houses of worship. But in more recent years, when municipalities opposed mosque projects, federal courts have often overruled them, drawing on the Religious Land Use and Institutionalized Persons Act, a law passed by Congress in 2000. The law protects the rights of Americans seeking to build houses of worship and forbids local governments from imposing stricter zoning and other rules on houses of worship.
But even when they win their battles in court, it comes with a cost. For example, it took two years and 39 federal court hearings for members of the Islamic Society of Basking Ridge in Bernards Township to get their mosque approved. That meant two years of meeting in rented space for prayers and paying legal fees instead of construction costs.
“Winning the lawsuit at the end doesn’t give those years back,” Uddin said. “And it doesn’t cover what the process cost people beyond money and time.”
That kind of struggle also sends a message that Muslims are not wanted.
“It dampens the ambition to try in the first place, and it slows down how Muslim communities can grow and put down roots the way any other congregation would,” she said.
And when a mosque goes up, that’s more political fodder for opponents, who paint a mosque not as a house of prayer but as a threat.
Protesters march during demonstration against a planned mosque and Islamic community center on Wednesday, July 14, 2010 in Murfreesboro, Tenn. Those opposing the mosque circulated a petition asking the county commission to rescind approval of the facility. (AP Photo/Christopher Berkey)
Last month leaders of the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro found themselves scrambling to find extra security and notify local police after an activist parked a truck emblazoned with “Deport All Muslims” outside of a mosque in nearby Nashville. The far-right activist, Jake Lang, also streamed himself handing out pulled pork sandwiches and denouncing Muslims, according to WKRN, a television station in Nashville.
“It just puts you on edge,” said Saleh Sbenaty, an engineering professor at Middle Tennessee State University and a longtime member of the Murfreesboro mosque.
In the early 2010s, Sbenaty was part of the group of Muslims in the Murfreesboro suburb of Nashville working to build a new mosque to replace a crowded and out-of-date building.
Most opponents, some of whom were also vocally opposed to the 9/11 mosque, organized marches in the streets and sued to block the mosque. Construction equipment at the building was set on fire. The federal government intervened in the lawsuit, arguing in court filings that Islam is a religion and that Muslims have the same religious liberty as other Americans. After a four-year court battle, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal by mosque critics, bringing the case to an end.
Yet anti-Muslim sentiment has been recently revived in Nashville. Lang’s publicity stunt was the latest in a series of anti-Muslim incidents in Nashville in recent years. Earlier this year, U.S. Representative Andy Ogles, a Republican who represents Nashville, made national headlines for claiming that “Muslims don’t belong in American society.”
Monty Fritts, a state legislator and failed candidate for Tennessee governor, claimed he would ban Muslims and other non-Christians if elected to office.
Sbenaty said that in the past, anti-Muslim activists had protested the mosque and sued to block the mosque from being built. Now elected leaders have joined in. Fringe ideas and conspiracy theories have become mainstream. And President Donald Trump has not helped.
“When the president of the United States says something, it adds fuel to the fire,” said Sbenaty.
I could never imagine being in this kind of situation here in the United States. But here we are.
Saleh Sbenaty, a longtime member of a Tennessee mosque
Add to that the tensions over the war in Iran, which has led to some resentment of Muslims, said Sbenaty, and the environment has become more hostile. “I could never imagine being in this kind of situation here in the United States,” he said. “But here we are.”
He said that the protests at mosques and anti-Muslim rhetoric from politicians are distractions from the bigger issues the country faces, like a struggling economy. But that rhetoric takes a toll.
“It’s just added pressure,” he said. “I think that is what they are hoping to do. Add more and more pressure.”
Still, Sbenaty said all the effort and struggle that went into building the mosque was worth it. He said that he came to the U.S. from Syria because he wanted to be free. And he is not giving up that freedom, especially the freedom of religion.
“Even though it caused a lot of stress and anxiety and caused a lot of hardship, we would not have given up an inch,” he said. “This is the First Amendment, and it’s so embedded in our Constitution and in our thinking, that we cannot give up. No matter what the cost.”
People attend Masjid An-Nur on the first Friday of Ramadan, Feb. 20, 2026, in Minneapolis. (Photo courtesy of Masjid An-Nur/Facebook)
For Uddin’s part, she sees the opposition to mosques, along with anti-Muslim activism, as part of a bigger movement that claims America is a nation for Christians.
“It’s about who gets to be visibly present in public space and who doesn’t,” she said. “The idea is simple: Public space should reflect and reinforce Christian identity, and any other faith’s visible presence in that space is an intrusion.”
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That kind of message can lead to people from non-Christian faiths feeling excluded. It can also lead to violence, in extreme cases. That’s something Uddin said her family has experienced.
In 2009, two teenagers were arrested for vandalizing a mosque in Miami, breaking windows and slashing tires in the parking lot. Her father had helped design and build that mosque.
“It’s an old story that keeps repeating itself,” she said.
Categories: America, COUNCIL ON AMERICAN ISLAMIC RELATION, Mosque, Muslims, United States, USA