Aussie Muslim School Gets Fatal Blow

The endeavor of Aussie Muslims in the small town of Camden to build an Islamic school to server nearly 1200 students has been dealt a major, final blow as a superior court ultimately supported the locals who have long rejected the school plan.

"The commissioner upheld the view that … it (the proposed school) was inconsistent with the rural character of the locality and that it would detract from that rural character,� Sue Morris, planning and development director of the Camden Local Council told the Brisbane Times on Tuesday, June 2.

Ruling in the bitter, long wrangle between the Council and Dar Tahfez El-Quran Society over the later’s plan for a 1,200 student campus in the Sydney suburb, the Land and Environment Court commissioner Graham Brown embraced residents' concerns about planning matters in the judgment.

"Other matters raised by local residents as being in the 'public interest' have been given no weight in the consideration of the development application as they are irrelevant considerations," Brown stated in the judgment.

Camden locals, represented in the Camden-Macarthur Residents Group, have strenuously fought the proposal.

Camden Council, which has voted against the school proposal in 2007, has always maintained the school would not meet planning requirements.

In July, the college took a revised development plan to the Land and Environment Court (LEC), which asked the council to comment.

Since filing the application at the LEC, Residents had waged a vigorous campaign against the school with a total of 4941 submissions made to the court opposing its establishment.

At the hearing in April, the council's evidence included a letter signed by four Christian churches stating that Islam espoused views that were "incompatible with the Australian way of life".

"We were always confident of winning," Andrew Wannett, spokesman for the Residents Group, said.

The Camden case has been the most high-profile bid to keep Islamic schools out of residential areas in many parts across Australia.

A 2007 poll taken by the Issues Deliberation Australia (IDA) think-tank found that Australians basically see Islam as a threat to the Australian way of life.

Shocked

Muslims in Camden expressed their shock and disappointment with the court decision, which leaves their community.

"They are very distraught. They are finding it very difficult to understand the reasoning behind this decision,� Keysar Trad, president of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia, told The Australian.

“This has cost them (the society) a great deal of money already.''

Muslims say they will most likely not be fighting this latest decision and have no plans to appeal the ruling.

"We just take it with an open heart and just carry on with our things," the Dar Tahfez El-Quran Society’s Vice President Issam Obeid said.

The Muslim Society is also left to mull whether they should seek another site in the area to build their school, which could have accommodated 540 primary school students and 360 secondary school students.

"I do know they are all hard-working citizens who do want a good education for their children,� the Society spokesman, Jeremy Bingham, said.

“I don't see them giving up on their objective. But where they go from here I don't know."

Australian Muslim leaders have warned that repeated opposition by local councils and residents to the building of Muslim schools and worship places is pushing the sizable minority into ghettos.

Muslims, who have been in Australia for more than 200 years, make up 1.5 percent of its 20-million population.

Islam is the country's second largest religion after Christianity.