Freedom of religion is taking a beating in a Tulsa suburb | Opinion
Something’s broken in Broken Arrow — and God only knows if it can be fixed.
The social contract that binds Americans together in more-or-less peaceful coexistence is being shredded in the Tulsa suburb by religious fanatics, who want to stop the construction of a house of worship on 15 vacant acres next to a freeway.
The problem, from the perspective of Broken Arrow’s self-appointed guardians of all things holy, is that the proposed house of worship is a mosque.
Although we have readers on the south side of the Kansas state line, I generally only write about Oklahoma issues under two circumstances: 1) as a cautionary tale for Kansans, or 2) when our Kansas experience might help them solve their problems.
In the case of the Broken Arrow mosque, it’s both. More about that in a minute, but first, let’s take a look at what’s going on.
The Islamic Society of Tulsa has a mosque in Tulsa, but they’ve outgrown it and want to establish a second one about 10 miles southwest in Broken Arrow. And that has touched off a holy war in the suburban community of about 120,000 souls.
Bigotry and hate on parade
A planning commission hearing on the mosque plan last month drew an overflow crowd.
In my more than 40 years of journalism, covering thousands of public meetings, I’ve never seen one where bigotry and hatred were expressed so openly and applauded so loudly.
It was as if the Salem witch hunts and the Spanish Inquisition had a baby and hired QAnon to raise it.
Some typical examples from the public comments:
“What I have a problem with is their religion and that they refuse to follow our laws. They lie to our face for as long as it takes, and are here to conquer us and destroy us.”
“Why we would even let Islamic into our country at all ever is beyond me; 493 — I don’t know if you know it — mosques across this nation. All they have to do is just send a text, ‘It’s time to take over America.’ That’s all they have to do. So why are we even considering putting another mosque in this area?“
“Their Bible, the Quran, says it’s OK to kill anybody who’s an infidel; an infidel is anybody who doesn’t believe the same way they do. They’re not beyond burning down our Christian churches or anything they think is opposed to them.”
“Islam is not a religion. It’s a misogynistic culture born of the writings of a pedophilic warlord around 570 AD . . . Before you call me a racist, please be aware that my dear departed wife of 37 years was half Mexican.”
“It’s cultural jihad. All of their religions, whether it be Shia or Sunni, they all agree in one thing, the establishment of Sharia law . . . Every woman in favor (of the mosque) tonight would be stoned for not wearing a burka. They would be castigated, beaten with rods. They would be thrown in a pit. We’ve seen it before, and we know what this religion does.”
That last guy came to the meeting wearing his MAGA hat and a custom-printed T-shirt reading “Allah is Satan” on the front and “Muhammed (something) in Hell” on the back. I couldn’t make out the exact wording because he was wearing some kind of harness that covered part of the message, but I think I got the drift.
The shirt’s particularly ironic because anyone who’s ever studied world religions for 15 minutes knows that “Allah” is simply the word “God” in Arabic — and Arabic-speaking Christians pray to Allah too.
Islam, along with Christianity and Judaism, all descend from the story of Abraham in the Old Testament — that’s why they’re called Abrahamic religions.
So when MAGA Man says “Allah is Satan,” he’s actually insulting his own God.
That wasn’t the only irony.
When the commission chairman tried to steer the comments toward actual planning issues, several anti-Islam speakers accused him of trying to stifle their First Amendment right to free speech. Then they proceeded to advocate for trampling the Muslims’ First Amendment right to freedom of religion.
Who’s lying now?
A lot of commenters objected to having outdoor loudspeakers to call Muslims to prayer five times a day. This kept coming up despite assurances from the mosque’s representative and its architect that it’s not done in Tulsa and won’t be done in Broken Arrow.
The crowd’s answer was that the mosque’s representative, a local engineer, was probably lying about it as a matter of religious law.
Claimed one man: “There’s a principle in Islam called ‘taqiyya’ in which you are justified in lying to infidels anytime you want, if it furthers the cause of Allah.”
That’s not true. As with Christianity, lying is considered a sin in Islam. Taqiyya is an exception that allows devout Muslims to lie about their faith when faced with persecution, as in the aforementioned Spanish Inquisition, where they were offered the choice to convert to Catholicism or die.
The hearing went on for 4 1/2 hours — I forced myself to watch the whole thing — before the commissioners voted to recommend the requested zone change, 4-1, and the conditional use permit for the mosque, 3-2.
On Monday, it goes to the City Council for a final decision, so if you missed the first episode of the “Why We Hate Muslims Show,” you can catch the sequel on livestream. The council even borrowed a local college auditorium to handle the expected crowd.
Meanwhile, mosque opponents held an unofficial meeting Tuesday night, drawing hundreds, to map out their strategy.
They were coached to back off on the anti-Muslim hate speech for the time being and instead complain about traffic (although the proposed mosque is right off a freeway exit), sewage disposal (the site is too distant to hook up to city sewers, but has spare acres for a septic field) and parking (there’s no street parking nearby, so the mosque planners are proposing about 700 spaces to handle peak attendance).
The opposition’s attempted gear change is too late to be believed. After the planning commission hearing, everyone knows that if the proposed building was a church instead of a mosque, there wouldn’t even be an opposition.
So who’s trying to deceive the infidels now?
Attorney general weighs in, poorly
In the latest wrinkle, Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond has announced an investigation into whether “local land-use decisions are being made lawfully, transparently and in full compliance with state and federal law” on the mosque — and only the mosque.
“Land for the development is owned by the North American Islamic Trust, which reportedly has ties to the radical Muslim Brotherhood,” Drummond said in his press release announcing the investigation.
NAIT is a voluntary donor-funded endowment that holds title to mosques across the country, to ensure that property purchased by local donors for religious facilities doesn’t get diverted to other uses. Christian denominations do exactly the same thing with their properties.
Drummond offered no evidence of any wrongdoing by NAIT or the Islamic Society of Tulsa.
The society issued a statement that the Broken Arrow land was purchased through charitable donations from residents of the Tulsa area, and no foreign funding was sought or received.
In his press release, Drummond also cited the unrelated case of an Islamic teenager from the Oklahoma City area who was convicted of plotting to attack synagogues. And he reached all the way back to the turn of the century to point out that some of the 9-11 terrorists learned to fly in Oklahoma flight schools.
This sort of accusation of guilt by religious affiliation is classic Drummond.
In June, he “demanded” the immediate expulsion of all Afghan refugees who were resettled in Oklahoma after fleeing the Taliban takeover of their country when the US occupation there ended.
Gov. Kevin Stitt, who worked with Catholic Charities to resettle the approximately 2,000 Afghans, called out Drummond for spreading “prejudice and fear tactics.”
Stitt was right.
Frankly, the only thing Drummond appears to be seriously investigating is how many Muslim-hating voters he can sway to his campaign for governor by attaching himself to the Broken Arrow zoning case.
His Facebook post announcing his investigation got 2,000 likes in 15 hours. Mission accomplished.
Lessons to be learned
The obvious lesson here for Kansans is to be better than Broken Arrow and resist intolerance — despite the constant drumbeat from the Trump Administration, its captive social and media networks, and state officials like Drummond telling us that Muslims are inherently bad and don’t belong here.
If we ever start treating our Muslim neighbors like Broken Arrow does, we’ll have only ourselves to blame when we lose a lot of our best engineers, physicians, college professors and other professionals.
To the people of Broken Arrow, take note that we’ve had a large mosque here in Wichita for more than 20 years.
The Muslims haven’t texted each other to take over, we don’t live under Sharia Law, nobody’s been stoned or thrown in a pit and nobody gets woken up by prayer calls at 5 a.m.
What took place at your planning commission didn’t reflect well on your city, Christianity or constitutional democracy.
Sit down, calm down, and start upholding the First Amendment. All of it.
This story was originally published January 9, 2026 at 5:18 AM.
