Final Vote on Moslem Zoning Thursday!

Editors note: The Adventures of the partners, Adam Cohen and Peter Brooks, continue. If you are not familiar with this saga, read the posting titled “Erotica Specialty Store Raided; former Mayor Higgins Mystified” at http://talkbacknorthampton.blogspot.com/2006/09/erotic-specialty-store-raided-former.html

From the Mrs. Potterville Gazette, October 30, 2011, by A.C.

The City Council will take a second vote this coming Thursday on the proposal to zone Islamic establishments 500 feet from any non-Islamic church/house of worship, day care center, park, playground, school, residence, or other Islamic establishment. Islamic establishments with display and Islamic activity areas under 1,000 square feet would be exempt from the proposal. The first vote was 6 to 3 in favor of the proposal.

The proposal followed swiftly upon the heels of the announcement by Adam “Allah” Cohen and Peter “The Prophet” Brooks to open an Islamic mosque and book, video and novelty store at 135 King Street, the A & P Islamic Prayer & Poetry Center. Adam “Allah” Cohen is the former partner of Jendi Reiter, who mobilized the neighborhood against the plans for the Center with her website, NoMoslemNorthampton.org.

Readers may recall that before becoming Allah and The Prophet, Adam and Peter formerly operated a small porn and poetry shop at the same location and sublet the balance of the premises to a drug store, Dolly’s, but nonetheless ran afoul of Mrs. Potterville’s adult establishment zoning regulations.

Upon their arrest, Adam and Peter voluntarily undertook the Treatment. The Treatment is the reeducation camp program where, we previously reported, former Council Member Bardsley inadvertently found himself after being mistakenly caught in one of Mrs. Pottersville’s Vice Squad sting operations.

Impressed with their progress, neighborhood judge Marianne “The Merciful" Richards let Adam and Peter keep the 135 King Street property and their homes, but she could not ignore her constituents’ demands that they be punished and sentenced them to no less than 2 years.

According to Adam and Peter, while serving their time and obsessed with thoughts about how to protect women and children from pornography, they talked with the Islamic members of their new community. They were very moved by Islam’s concern for protecting women from men’s prurient interests by requiring women to wear the burka and the hijab, and be veiled, among other things. So, they converted.

Now they are determined to make 135 King Street an Islamic center for prayer, sermons, books, videos, and novelties, like knifes, swords and whips used for meting out justice in accordance with Islamic law and custom. They purchased the Northampton franchise rights from an Islamic center franchisor, Fatwa Video.

Many believe the head of Fatwa Video, Mr. “Big Bucks” Ghaalib, is associated with al-Qaeda because he formerly had business relations with the Taliban in Afghanistan. It is known that he even dined with Osama bin Laden. They are positive that the Fatwa Video store will be just a money laundering operation or large billboard for the website on a heavily traveled artery of the City. As Mr. Bill said, “why would they want to establish a large scale Islamic center here?”

The original plans for the Center included a social lounge exclusively for men of all faiths to visit. For free they could chat as they shared a cup of coffee and smoked from the hooka, or “relax as the belly dancers entertained them when nothing important is on the television, like a Patriots or Red Sox game.” Peter continued, “We do have our neighborhood entertainment priorities straight!”

But, community outrage against the social lounge for a number of reasons prompted the pair to delete the social lounge from the plans. Nonetheelss, said one employee of the nearby body shop, “We’re really bummed about that ...” Fatwa Video’s representative protested, “The men no touch the dancers. If they do, we cut off their fingers!”

The neighbors became alarmed when they visited the Fatwa Video website and saw that its stock included magazines and videos that graphically depicted and celebrated female circumcision and the defacement -- even the tortured murder -- of errant women, and other corporal measures, such as the beheadings of infidel Christians and Jews found in Islamic lands.

But most of all, they objected to the dark robed men armed with knives “already streaming” into the neighborhood, visions of pro-jihad murals and graffiti splashed across the storefront and to “those damn shrieking” calls to prayer. Adam protested, “Neither murals nor loudspeakers are included in the plan, and no one complains about the clanging of those ‘damn’ infidel church bells! So, …”

Many citizens, particularly if accompanied by children, say they will avoid walking or even driving past the Center. The City’s Memorandum justifying the proposed zoning by its Planning Director states in pertinent part:

“Because the large scale Islamic Establishments greater than 1,000 square feet have the tendency to create blank, inactive voids in the street fabric due to their size and façade treatments it is important to ensure that such establishments are not located within 500 feet of such walkable neighborhoods that include churches, residences or schools. These voids discourage walking or decrease the number of trips that are done without a car or are done by younger children on their own, …”

“Additionally, the secondary effects of larger scale Islamic establishments with Islamic material often include impacts to adjoining businesses that may result in economic decline and declining property values which further spread the inactive void along the street façade. This economic decline may be less serious in areas where everyone drives and is cloistered from the effects of nearby business, but in Mrs. Pottersville where many people walk, and we are investing large sums to increase the number of trips done on foot (and by bicycle) the impacts would be devastating. …”

In an earlier radio debate Jendi Reiter claimed that Adam and Peter have “no right to subject her neighborhood to excessive physical risks, risks documented at NoMoslemNorthampton.org.” and that “the relocation of the Fatwa Video store to the outskirts of town will be but a slight inconvenience.”

Adam retorted, “You act like you own the neighborhood. Jendi, you don’t.” Peter and Adam also live near 135 King Street. In fact, closer than 134 North Street where Jendi and Adam lived together.

Peter protested that the public which they wish to reach are the pedestrians and bicyclers who roam the downtown area, as well as drive-by shoppers who may pass the Center as they come and go from the downtown area. “After all,” said Peter, “if you are not already a follower of Muhammad the Prophet, would you make a special trip to an Islamic Center somewhere behind the Wal-Mart?”

Adam further claimed that “the Center should draw many more pedestrian travelers, albeit many at first who are Islamic, out further down King Street from the downtown area in accordance with the City’s goals for the City.”

In public hearings on the matter, the City’s Planning Director has identified, albeit vaguely, two places where he believes the Center could be located under the proposed zoning ordinance, but has not released any definitive study about either the presumed secondary effects or the availability of places where the Center could be located. Indeed, as Peter pointed out in the radio debate, “who knows even if the owners of those alternative locations would sell or lease to us? If not, what then? What purpose does the First Amendment serve if a City can, as a practical matter, zone you out of town?”

In the radio debate, Adam, tried to finish it off with a philosophical flourish, “If a tree falls in the forest, it doesn’t make a sound if there is no one there to hear it!”

“Adam,” Peter said, “I think its ‘If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, does it make a sound?'”

“But, Peter ….”

“Whatever!”

In other news, President Cheney invited Mayor Mrs. Potter, one of the leading socially conservative “red” democrats, to visit the White House and boost her campaign for Governor …