BROKEN ARROW, Okla. — One day before an anticipated special meeting, the campaign to gather support for rezoning needed to build a mosque collected more than a thousand opinion forms to turn into Broken Arrow City Council, proponents said.
The planned Islamic community center would be a place of worship, recreation, and even health care for more than 10,000 Muslims in Green Country if the council approved it, according to Islamic Society of Tulsa.
Tulsa County Democratic Party chair Sarah Gray told 2 News on Jan. 11 that is worth generating support.
Gray said she spent the day coordinating volunteers to knock on doors in Broken Arrow to collect yellow supporting opinion forms for submission to the city council.
WATCH: 'Stand with them': Supporters of mosque plans campaign before city council vote:
“I didn’t call anybody and say, ‘Hey, are you guys Democrats? Are there any Democrats who are affected by this?’ We just saw that they were neighbors who were in need of having neighbors come and stand with them,” Gray said.
Tulsa Metropolitan Ministry CEO Aliye Shimi - herself a Muslim resident of Broken Arrow – said she's collected more than 3,000 opinion forms from congregants of non-Muslim faith groups around the Tulsa metro area.
"This shows that we are a community," Shimi said. "This shows that unity that’s in the community.”
Last week Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond announced his office will investigate the construction's funding and whether its parent organization might have ties to terrorism.
- Previous coverage>>> PROPOSED MOSQUE: Oklahoma AG to investigate plans
Shimi said she doesn’t buy it.
“(It is) a waste of our taxpayer money," Shimi said. "Just feeding into the fear of these poor community members in Broken Arrow, right? I understand there's a lot of ignorance behind this. I understand there's a lot of fear. People are afraid of the unknown."
The Broken Arrow City Council special meeting will be at the NSU-Broken Arrow campus administration building at 6pm on Jan. 12.
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