Tommy Tuberville

This is an opinion column

It is difficult to imagine a more politically ironic place for this debate to be unfolding.

Auburn, Alabama.

Home of Auburn University. The Loveliest Village on the Plains. Deep in the heart of the Bible Belt.

And home to Tommy Tuberville, Alabama’s current U.S. senator, and the frontrunner to become our next governor.

While Tuberville has spent much of the past year sounding the alarm about radical Islam, Sharia law and what he believes is a growing threat inside America, the city he calls home is moving closer to construction of a new Islamic center and mosque.

Not Auburn, Michigan.

Auburn, Alabama.

The Auburn Islamic Center isn’t new. Muslims have worshipped in Auburn for years, and the center says the broader Auburn-area Muslim community has grown to more than 700 people and has outgrown its existing facility. The center purchased approximately five acres for a new facility and says plans have been submitted to the city. Phase I is expected to cost more than $2.5 million, with construction potentially beginning this year.

That’s a significant development for Auburn.

Yet if you’ve been waiting for Auburn’s local elected leadership to have much to say about it, don’t hold your breath.

Residents have appeared before the City Council and raised concerns about the project. Some have questioned traffic and parking. Others have raised questions about the size and scope of the development and what activities eventually could take place there.

Whether you agree with those concerns or not, they’re being raised by people Auburn’s mayor and City Council were elected to represent.

Where is their voice?

That’s what makes the contrast with Tommy Tuberville so striking.

Tuberville hasn’t exactly been subtle about where he stands.

Earlier this year, he warned about what he sees as the growing threat of radical Islam in America.

“The enemy is now inside the gates,” Tuberville declared.

In July, he went further, warning about Islam and Sharia law and arguing that Americans would be naive to assume the problems experienced elsewhere in the world could never develop here.

Predictably, his comments generated outrage.

Critics accused Tuberville of Islamophobia and argued that he was blurring an enormously important distinction between Muslims peacefully practicing their religion and radical Islamists who seek to impose their ideology on others.

But the dangers of religious extremism aren’t theoretical to me.

Years ago, I led a Christian nonprofit called Four Corners Ministries that worked extensively in South Sudan.

I first traveled there in 2004 and returned numerous times in the years that followed. I saw communities devastated by conflict and people whose lives had been shaped by violence, displacement and persecution during a war involving the Islamist government in Khartoum and the predominantly Christian and traditionalist south.

South Sudan taught me that religious extremism becomes far more dangerous when extremists acquire the political power to impose their beliefs on others.

Those experiences have never left me.

But Auburn isn’t South Sudan.

And Auburn’s Muslims aren’t responsible for atrocities committed thousands of miles away.

That’s an important distinction.

The First Amendment protects their right to peacefully practice their religion just as surely as it protects mine. Tuberville himself has acknowledged that peaceful Muslims have every right to practice their religion under the Constitution.

But here’s what I find so frustrating about what is happening in Auburn.

Our elected officials don’t have to oppose the mosque simply because some residents do. They don’t have to agree with every concern raised at a City Council meeting. And they

certainly don’t have the legal authority to declare that Baptists can build churches in Auburn, but Muslims cannot build mosques.

What they should do is lead.

Residents shouldn’t have to show up at City Hall asking questions about a development generating this much concern while wondering whether the people they elected share any of those concerns themselves.

Tell residents whether you support the project, whether you have concerns, what authority the city actually has and what requirements the development must meet. And if the law leaves Auburn little choice once those requirements are satisfied, have enough courage to tell your constituents that, too.

That’s called leadership.

Unfortunately, Auburn increasingly operates like a city where difficult decisions are handed to professional staff while elected officials stand safely on the sidelines.

Sometimes you get the impression Auburn City Council members don’t go to the bathroom without first asking the city manager which stall is permitted under the comprehensive plan.

That may make governing more comfortable.

It doesn’t make it leadership.

And perhaps that explains Tommy Tuberville’s political success better than almost anything else.

Tuberville didn’t become a United States senator because Alabama voters thought he was an expert on Senate procedure. And he isn’t the frontrunner for governor because voters believe he has spent his life studying the Alabama Administrative Code.

His political gift is much simpler.

Tommy Tuberville gives voice to what a lot of Alabama voters are already thinking but believe their political leaders are too afraid to say.

That’s true of immigration, Sharia law, radical Islam, and any number of cultural issues where voters believe their leaders are more comfortable telling them what they shouldn’t worry about than listening to why they’re worried.

You may love what Tuberville says.

You may hate it.

But nobody has to wonder what he thinks.

None of that means Auburn should apply one zoning standard to a Baptist church and another to a mosque. But equal treatment works both ways. If a church with hundreds of worshippers would be required to address traffic and parking, require the same of the mosque.

No special treatment, in either direction.

What Auburn residents deserve right now is transparency and leadership from the people they elected.

Instead, there is an extraordinary political picture developing.

Tommy Tuberville is in Washington giving voice to concerns about radical Islam while residents in the city he calls home are appearing at City Hall with questions about a new Islamic center and hearing comparatively little from their elected representatives.

Maybe Auburn’s leaders think those concerns are misplaced. Say so.

Maybe they share some of them. Say that.

Maybe their lawyers have told them the city has virtually no discretion if the project complies with existing zoning and development requirements. Then explain it.

But say something.

That’s what elected officials are elected to do.

My experiences in South Sudan taught me never to dismiss the dangers of religious extremism. But they also reinforced something else: America has a constitution precisely, so government doesn’t decide whose religion is acceptable.

We can be vigilant about radical Islam without pretending every Muslim is a radical. We can defend religious liberty without surrendering our right to ask tough questions.

And elected officials can respect both principles without becoming mute when their constituents express legitimate concerns.

Tuberville understands at least that last part better than most politicians.

“The enemy is now inside the gates,” he has warned.

Whether you think that rhetoric is courageous or inflammatory, Tuberville is willing to say publicly what he believes.

Meanwhile, back inside the gates of his hometown, Auburn residents are asking questions about a new mosque that could begin construction this year.

They deserve answers.

They deserve transparency.

Most of all, they deserve elected officials willing to give voice to the people they represent.

Tommy Tuberville figured that out a long time ago.

Maybe Auburn City Hall should take notes.