When religion confronts zoning

Property rights and religion rarely find their way into a sentence spoken with a smile. The two concepts usually don't get along well.

As we've seen time and again in the suburbs, church expansions, new mosques and proposed religious compounds tend to provoke a decidedly harsh rebuff from neighbors.

Sometimes concerns are legitimate: extra people creating too much traffic, inadequate parking, more noise, litter. Sometimes it's simple NIMBYism. And then there is the more insidious bigotry. We've seen every combination of reasons in objections to new houses of worship in the suburbs.

Take an effort to get a house in an unincorporated stretch of Army Trail Road near West Chicago legally declared a house of worship.

The Islamic Center of Western Suburbs purchased the single-family home in 2008 and made some landscaping changes to expand parking and turn it into a prayer center. It did so without seeking permission to change the legal use of that land.

Asking forgiveness rather than permission has rightfully perturbed many neighbors.

The house has a septic system designed for one family.

Given that worshipers arrive there five times a day, it's bound to get more than its share of use.

And then there is parking.

The house shares a private drive with a family that complains of sometimes being blocked from coming home or leaving.

A representative of the Islamic Center says between two and 20 worshipers arrive for any given prayer service just before sunrise, at noon, midafternoon, just after sunset and again before bedtime.

DuPage County code calls for 30 parking spaces, but the center officials are asking for 15 to be approved - to see if that is sufficient.

Buying a home across the street from a cornfield and expecting that cornfield to be harvested ad infinitum is naive at best.

But buying a home in an established neighborhood and expecting the house next door to remain someone's house is completely rational.

We sympathize with the notion that it's important for Muslims to have a place of worship that is close in order to meet obligations for prayer.

Expansions of existing houses of worship are less problematic but still hotly debated.

In this case, neighbors seem to have made a pretty good case for themselves. Ultimately, it's up to the county board to decide.

This will not be the last case of its kind.

Where the debate centers on real zoning issues, we are sympathetic to neighbors.

But when the complaints are vague and the reasoning thin, where it's clear that bigotry is at hand, we'll always side with the people trying to find a place to worship.