The Bartlett meeting began with the Pledge of Allegiance — to the American flag and to the Republic for which about 50 citizens have gathered to express their deep concern. “Radical Islam is here and it’s threatening every freedom we hold dear,” said Mason Ezzell, a local businessman and former Air Force pilot.

He was addressing the February meeting of the Memphis chapter of ACT! for America, a grassroots, anti-Islam organization that claims more than 150,000 members in 650 chapters across the country. “I wish it wasn’t true. I hate that it is. Not all Muslims are terrorists. Many Muslims are good people who just don’t know what’s happening. We don’t want to believe what’s happening, but it is. This is real, folks.”

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Houston state senator Rodney Elliswon’t let up trying to get a private school association to let a Muslim school join them.

The Texas Association of Private and Parochial Schools rejected Houston’s Iman Academy back in 2010. But Iman isn’t the only Islamic school TAPPS turned down. Iman and the others say the application process makes it pretty clear that Muslims are not welcome.

This all came out when TAPPS said it would not change its state basketball play-offs schedule to keep Houston’s Robert M. Beren Academy, an orthodox Jewish school, from playing on the Sabbath. TAPPS backed down when parents went to court.

Ellis joined the fray for both schools. And, with the basketball season over, that leaves the Iman question still out there.

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A crowd gathered at the Brookfield Public Library raised questions Tuesday not just about a proposed mosque in the area, but about the faith and ideology of those who plan to use it.

“We’re not fighting against a religion, what we’re fighting against is a tyrannical ideology,” said Janet Spiewak of the conservative Eagle Forum, which hosted the discussion.

She urged residents to raise concerns about the mosque’s traffic impact and other zoning issues at the city’s upcoming meetings on the project, presumably as a way of stopping it from being built. “We can, through public pressure, force the aldermen and the mayor to acknowledge where the majority of Brookfield stands,” she said.

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Members of the Brookfield-Elm Grove Interfaith Network are coming to the defense of the Islamic Society of Milwaukee’s proposal to build a mosque in Brookfield, the Journal Sentinel reported as the religious leaders started a letter of support.

“This is about the rights of decent human beings to have a place to worship,” Rabbi Steven Adams of Congregation Emanu-El in Waukesha, who was drafting the letter on behalf of the group, told the Journal Sentinel.

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