JOSEPHINE, Texas—This rural town with farmland stretching to the horizon might as well be a million miles away from New York City with its skyscrapers and big-city worries.
But the residents of the Big Apple and Josephine have something in common: controversy over the construction of a mosque.
Perhaps not since the so-called ground zero mosque was proposed two blocks from the World Trade Center site of the 9/11 terrorist attacks has a mosque drawn so much attention.
The proposed 2009 mosque and Islamic cultural center in the New York City borough of Manhattan was known as Park51. It faced sharp public criticism for plans to place a symbol of Islam so close to where thousands of people had died from an attack by radical jihadists. Groups such as Stop Islamization of America led protests against “radical Islam” before the project was eventually abandoned.
More than a decade later, as Muslim migration to Texas has increased, a similar uproar has risen over a proposed Muslim-focused neighborhood anchored by a mosque in rural Texas, some 40 miles from Dallas.
Promotional materials first described the proposed EPIC City, Texas, named after the East Plano Islamic Center (EPIC), as the “epicenter of Islam in America.”
Following backlash at the local, state, and federal levels, it changed its name to The Meadow.
The development would encompass 402 acres of farmland outside Josephine, a town of 8,800 residents founded in 1888 by a railroad company back when cotton was king in Texas.
It would include 1,000 homes, a mosque, a K–12 faith-based school, sports facilities, a community college, senior housing, an outreach center, and businesses.
Since the idea was proposed, numerous public officials and community members have worked to halt the development, citing concerns that the new community might not integrate with the local population and asking questions about sharia, or Islamic law, and potential ties to foreign Islamic groups.
The development has prompted legal battles, state and federal investigations, and new state laws addressing neighborhood composition and foreign ownership. In the ongoing battle, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott classified some Islamic groups as foreign terrorist organizations. The White House is considering similar action.
Grassroots Backlash
The Muslim-led community would be located in an area largely populated by white and Hispanic residents whose religion is predominantly Christian.Locally, residents have voiced concerns about Islamic radicalization and sharia law in communities that they believe may not integrate into U.S. culture, despite the developer’s denials.
Sharia law is an Islamic code of conduct and law derived from the Quran, often at odds with laws and rights in Western countries.
One woman who spoke at a Collin County Commissioners Court meeting in November raised concerns that sharia would replace U.S. law within the development.
“This remains an Islamic-focused community, and Islam is fundamentally incompatible with our Constitution,” she said.
At a Josephine City Council meeting, a resident of Armenian descent said people should be aware that, in his view, Islam is only peaceful when it is not in control.
“Islam is not truly a religion of peace,“ he said. ”Once they get to a certain point in a culture, they start to ravage it from within.”
Most Muslims are good people, he said, but when their religious ideology demands it, they feel compelled to obey.
“They don’t speak up against it,” he said.
He referenced historical events, saying that the West should consider the Armenian genocide more than a century ago under the Ottoman Empire, which imposed sharia.
“We were walked into the Syrian desert until we died of hunger, of starvation,” he said. “They hung Christian females to posts and lit them on fire as candles.”
As public concerns have intensified, state officials have stepped up their efforts to address them.
The lawsuit claims that the housing development would be illegally reserved for Muslim residents. It also asserts that the project’s leaders “lined their own pockets” with funds during development.
Developers Say No Wrongdoing
Meanwhile, the Texas enclave’s developers and Muslim groups have denounced the legal action as Islamophobic and a violation of their rights.“Anti-Islam organizing targeting the Muslim-led EPIC City development project saw bias mobilizing the power of Texas government to deny Muslims their equal opportunities to pursue their dreams and potential,” the report states.
It denounces what it calls “anti-Islam” legislation and “advanced conspiracy theories” involving “no-go zones.”
The report compares tactics used to stop the EPIC development to those used in the controversy over the ground zero mosque at Park51.
“We also note that Governor Abbott and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton’s attack on EPIC City has not resulted in any evidence of wrongdoing to date and may violate Constitutional prohibitions against arbitrary government action,” the group stated.
“My clients are law-abiding Texans, law-abiding Americans, and law-abiding Muslims,” he said.
He said no one associated with the community follows or implements sharia and that Abbott was attempting to “demonize” Muslims.
State Legislation
Republicans campaigning in the Lone Star State are tapping into public unease over mass immigration and the increase in terrorist incidents, including the Nov. 26 shooting of two members of the Washington National Guard by an Afghan immigrant.Abbott is currently seeking his fourth term as governor, while Paxton is running in the Senate Republican primary against incumbent Sen. John Cornyn (R-Texas).
In a flurry of activity this fall, Abbott took steps to block foreign threats and developments in Texas.
Abbott stated that the law bans residential property developments such as EPIC City “from creating sharia compounds and defrauding and discriminating against Texans.”
“The fact is, religious freedom is a central part of the Texas Constitution,” he said. “But bad actors like EPIC and EPIC City tried to use religion as a form of segregation. We will ensure that we have the laws and law enforcement in place to prevent attempts to build such discriminatory compounds in the state of Texas.”
Other leading Republicans, opponents of Islamic extremism and sharia, have weighed in on the EPIC development.
In May, Cornyn said the Department of Justice had launched a civil rights investigation into the development at his request. The investigation was ultimately dropped with no violations cited.
‘A Different Population’
Simon Hankinson, senior research fellow at the Border Security and Immigration Center at The Heritage Foundation, said public fears over Muslim enclaves and mass migration are symptoms of a brewing national identity crisis.Americans fear that they are losing their culture and way of life to foreign influences, including those from the Middle East, he told The Epoch Times.
“But obviously, now the Muslim population is growing rapidly with immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa—and it’s a cultural change,” Hankinson said.
“So it’s a new phenomenon. I think people, maybe in parts of rural Texas, were kind of used to the certain makeup that they had.”
More Americans are paying attention to immigration policy because it is affecting their communities, according to him.
Social media is awash in posts highlighting the effect of mass migration in Europe, warning that it is a harbinger of things to come in America.
On Dec. 20, Tulsi Gabbard, director of National Intelligence, warned against “Islamist ideology” and sharia taking over the West during a speech at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest.
“If we don’t take action to identify this threat, to define it, to call it out for what it is, and take action to defeat it, then we will find ourselves in a place where many European countries and countries like Australia have found themselves.”
Hankinson, an immigrant from the UK, said native-born English citizens are now the minority in London.
“If you replace a population with a different population, then everything’s going to change,” he said.
But immigration is not accidental; it is a policy choice that voters make, Hankinson said.
Small groups of immigrants with cultures similar to those of the areas they move to tend to assimilate, as is the case with Ukrainians settling in Poland, he said.
Enclaves of culturally diverse immigrants have been accepted when they are localized and relatively small, Hankinson said. But large groups of people coming into a country will change that society.
“I think Americans are noticing, and some of them probably don’t like it,” he said.
Ammon Blair, security consultant and senior fellow for the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Secure and Sovereign Nation Initiative, said the mass migration that occurred during the Biden administration was different from past migrations.
“This is a completely engineered, fabricated form of immigration where it’s done for the sole purpose of eradicating the sovereignty of a nation and state,” he told The Epoch Times.
Blair pointed to large immigrant settlements that sometimes remain under the control of the countries the immigrants left, making assimilation difficult.
Another example, according to Blair, would be recent fraud rooted in Minnesota’s Somali settlement, which allegedly funds the Al-Shabaab terrorist group. Since then, Trump has announced a crackdown on temporary legal status for Somalis.
“It all comes down to not just assimilation, but allegiance,” Blair said.
Hankinson said that after experiencing immigration himself and watching countries change, he no longer believes that multiculturalism works, saying that it has probably “failed as an experiment.”
The ongoing debate over the proposed Muslim-centric development in Texas encapsulates larger questions about immigration, assimilation, and national identity across the United States, according to him.
“The idea is that we can all live in one country, but we can have completely different values, beliefs, religions, cultural traditions, etc.,“ he said. ”I don’t think there’s enough to hold a country together without those things.”
