Terrorism, traffic and more tolerance

Krysiek said by welcoming the Muslim community into their midst, Walkersville residents would stay true to the conservative culture of their town.

‘‘Of all the groups that could be coming in, I would say the Muslims from Pakistan are probably the most conservative, in terms of practices,” Krysiek said.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community is a predominantly Pakistani sect whose members believe that a man born in India in 1835 was the Messiah.

‘‘Rural communities are conservative by nature,” Krysiek said, adding that the Ahmadi group, if welcomed to Walkersville, would likely ‘‘reinforce the conservative values” of the town.

The Ahmadiyya Muslim Community condemned terrorism during its convention earlier this year at the Dulles Expo Center in Chantilly, Va. Its leaders preached to members about nonviolence and loyalty to governments.

Krysiek acknowledged that the Ahmadis, like any group of Muslims in the United States, face a public relations hurdle in persuading a small community to embrace them, because Americans tend to associate Islam with terrorism since the Sept. 11 attacks.

The Silver Spring-based group wants to buy the 224-acre Nicodemus Farm and use it as a site for an annual convention of up to 10,000 American Muslims. A proposed retreat center, which will include a building with two gymnasiums and 124 permanent parking spaces, will also be used for three regional events per year, for between 450 and 1,000 people. About 20 Ahmadi families would use the center for weekly services.

Town commissioners are preparing to vote Oct. 24 on a new ordinance that could throw the Ahmadi’s deal with a local landowner into uncertainty.

The ordinance, if approved, would make it necessary for the Muslim group to ask town commissioners to rezone the Nicodemus Farm from agriculture to institutional.

Opponents of the plan to build the retreat center have said they want Walkersville to continue to look the way it did when they moved there.

Farmers whose land neighbors the Nicodemus farm on Stauffer Road have said that’s impossible, and that the Muslims’ proposal beats the alternative — high-density residential, which the farm’s owner, David Moxley, has proposed in the past.

Stauffer Road residents J. Trego, John Zimmerman and Robert Ramsburg have publicly supported the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community’s plan to set up a convention site on the Nicodemus farm.

‘‘I would hate to see it be houses,” J. Trego Zimmerman said at a Sept. 25 Planning and Zoning Commission meeting, urging officials to vote against a new ordinance that would remove religious use from the agriculture zoning district. ‘‘Something’s going to change on this property.”

Many Walkersville residents have argued that the group’s conventions would overwhelm the state highway running through town of 5,600 residents.